The cult of the early riser

Can somebody explain why the church still does early morning seminary for high school students? I mean, we’ve known for years that teens really do generally need to sleep in later than those of other ages—but we make a big deal about getting up hyper-early to go to seminary classes.

So why? Why do we put our teens through something that is so clearly bad for them and call it a virtue?

Attaching a name to a story

So i was paging through the August Ensign, and i noticed that in the very last article in the issue the author talked about growing up in an abusive home. However, the name of the author looked like a real name, not “Name Withheld”.

I can only assume that the editors responsible for this oversight have been taken out and flogged.

p.s. Actually, to be entirely honest, i welcome this. I mean—and i’m dead serious in this postscript—if we regularly attach things such as abuse only to nameless folks, or at least real folks who are still ashamed enough about it or still feel so injured by it that they won’t let their names be attached to the story, how will we ever really be able to combat such thing amongst us?

Timely thoughts from times past

Just saw this bit, and i thought it was worth quoting:

We ought always to be aware of those prejudices which sometimes so strangely present themselves, and are so congenial to human nature, against our friends, neighbors, and brethren of the world, who choose to differ from us in opinion and in matters of faith. Our religion is between us and our God. Their religion is between them and their God.

It just seemed worth quoting, given certain hot-button arguments going on right now in the US.

Oh—and the source of the quote? Joseph Smith. (It’s from a letter he co-wrote to Edward Partridge and the church at large from Liberty Jail, Liberty, Missouri, dated 20 March 1839.)

Sunday is a special day

When i was growing up, i never really understood why people felt the need to dress up when they went to church.* I heard a lot of people explain it, though, by saying that the sabbath is a special day, and so we need to dress differently on Sundays than we do on other days.

You know, that actually makes a lot of sense to me.** However, what doesn’t make sense to me is why that means all the lawyers and bankers and such out there end up wearing the same clothes to church on Sunday as they wear to work most of the other days of the week—doesn’t that mean that, for them, Sunday is not a special day?

* Okay, full disclosure: To some extent, i still don’t.

** I’m completely serious about that. And that’s why i’m left with the question i close the post with.

Sometimes dissonance is fun

A few months ago there was an announcement of a stake activity for young women in association with a church broadcast for them. The stake activity was to feature “workshop classes…in nail, skin, and hair care”. I really hope that the church broadcast that followed focused on how it’s what’s on the inside, not on the outside, that really counts.

The sabbath is a relative thing, really

I may have said this before, and this isn’t limited to Mormons, but it bears saying today anyway: Why are so many Mormons so into the idea that it’s a horrible, horrible thing for businesses like grocery stores to be open on Sunday? I mean, why is it so important to us that observant Seventh-Day Adventists and Jews have more trouble doing their shopping than the rest of us?

In which David B makes a political statement

During my exile in Utah, i noticed that there were a lot of ballot initiatives. (I mean, not a lot by California standards, but still a lot.) For those unfamiliar with ballot initiatives, they’re a process by which a proposed law gets placed on the ballot at an election (along with the various candidates for public office), and if the ballot initiative gets enough votes, it becomes law.

Anyway, Jeanne and i have been reading through the church’s redress petition to the United States in the late 1830s, and i just have to say that i’m rather surprised that any Mormon with a sense of history would be fully comfortable with the whole idea of a local majority making legal decisions.

An unexpected biography

Thurl Bailey played basketball for the Utah Jazz from 1983 to 1991, and currently lives in Salt Lake City. He is also a Mormon. All of these things would seem to go together.

The fun thing about this is that he wasn’t a Mormon when he played for the Jazz—he became a Mormon some years later, when he was playing professional basketball in Italy.

Not at all significant, really, i just found it an amusing bit of unexpectedness.

p.s. And he has an amazing bass—basso profondo, really—singing voice.

White Lines (Don’t Do It)

Reposted, with permission, from the Combs Family* blog:

There was a woman dealing little baggies of a powdery white substance out of the trunk of her car in the church parking lot today.

Suspicious, huh?

Rewind to Relief Society…

“Hey ladies, Sister Blank ended up with a Costco size box of baking powder and won't be able to use it all before it expires. She has separated it out into some bags and if you would like to take some stop by her car after church. She doesn’t want it to go to waste.”

A bunch of Mormon ladies in a parking lot attracting attention. Over baking supplies.

Well, I thought it was funny.

And so did i, i must say.

* Written by Meggan Combs, someone who i actually know not just from the ’net, but from Real Life™. Yes, believe it or not, such things are possible these days.

Blatant heresy

Why are Mormons so into having choristers lead us whenever we sing? It’s really bizarre, particularly when you consider that it’s something a lot of other religious traditions do just fine without.

Us, though, we just have to have someone waving at us while we sing, even to the point of occasionally press-ganging people who would rather not into performing that role. Why?

True confessions

A moment from my life:

Last night i walked down the stairs and found my 11- and 9-year-old daughters reading the Song of Solomon from a very, very modern translation (The Message, to be specific). Interspersed among their reading of the book, they were having a discussion about healthy and unhealthy relationships, particularly but not exclusively romantic ones.

The fact that this all happened spontaneously in children i’ve had a hand in raising is probably enough to convince a good chunk of the Mormons out there that i and my whole family are on the proverbial highway to hell, and i’m pressing down hard on the accelerator.

Further, that stumbling on this was a proud parenting moment for me probably simply affirms their conclusions.

Really, sitting works just as well

Why are some people so utterly insistent about standing for intermediate hymns? I mean, i get that in some congregations the tradition is to stand for them, but the way some people (often choristers, actually) act, you’d think a congregation not standing for a song that happens to be wedged between speakers was a symbol of mass apostasy.

Again with the skirts and trousers

One more thought on skirts: I know this isn’t limited to Mormons, but what’s the deal with skirts (not miniskirts here, i’m talking about knee-length things) and dresses being perceived as more “moral” than trousers on women? I mean, i always thought of skirts and dresses as somewhat less moral, what with sexual access being quite a bit easier with them and all. So what am i missing here?

It…It was the trousers, really.

We get weird about clothing in our church. Consider, for example, the one i’ve run across more than once that holds that women must wear skirts to go into the chapel. Why?

Weirdest instance of this i’ve ever run across: Some years ago, Tuesday or Wednesday or whatever youth activity night, and a handful of women huddled outside the entrance to the chapel, trying to figure out how to get the child of one of them who was running around in the chapel. The problem? All of the women were wearing trousers. I walked by with a (male) friend, and they asked us to go fetch the child, which was then done.

The weirdness? We were wearing jeans. At least some of the women were wearing dress slacks. So what was up with it being okay for us to go in the chapel but not them?

p.s. Ten bonus points for whoever gets the obscure film reference in the title of today’s post.

Is this really a covenant?

Is Mosiah 18:8–10 a summary of the baptismal covenant (as it’s usually referenced), or is it a summary of the qualifications and results of an effectual baptism? I think there’s a difference, and i suspect the difference would be important (not to mention that i suspect that it’s the latter, not the former), but i can’t put my finger on exactly how and why.

p.s. I actually like Blogger as a blogging platform, but my biggest annoyance with it (aside from the lack of decent photo placement tools, though that doesn’t really affect this blog) is that the buttons for publishing a post and saving it as a draft are right next to each other, making it really, really easy to think you’re scheduling a post to go up one afternoon, when you’re actually keeping it invisible to your readers. That is all.

For all the Mormon MBAs out there

It's worth remembering that the plain text of the Word of Wisdom says that Mormon-made sacramental wine is acceptable. There's gotta be a Mormon entrepreneur out there who sees a money-making opportunity in that.

On fear

Just an interesting point a sacrament meeting speaker made recently: The word fear is problematic in religious contexts, because it’s ambiguous. Therefore, it becomes necessary to contrast what i as a linguist might call fear_reverence and fear_shame (with reverence and shame being the words the speaker used).

Again, the gathering is over

Okay, so i completely understand people singing and loving “Come, Come Ye Saints”—it’s not my musical preference (it’s in G major to begin with, never a good choice), but fine, whatever works for you.

But could we please have a rewrite on some of the lyrics? Especially that bit in the third verse, which starts

We’ll find the place which God for us prepared
Far away in the West…

I mean, this isn’t accurate anymore on two counts.

First of all, this is a clear reference to the “gathering” to Utah. However, it hasn’t been the policy of the church to have church members move to Utah for a long, long time—so why make it sound like it’s still in effect in one of our most commonly-sung songs? (I suggest replacing “Far away in the West” with something like “Near at hand, where we stand”.)

Second, isn’t “in the West” a bit relative? I mean, now that i live in Alaska, far away in the west is Moscow, if it’s anywhere. (In fact, when i was growing up in Maryland, i started refusing to sing that line on the principle that the gathering was over, and the land that God had prepared for me was right where i was. On the other hand, of course, during my exile in Utah, i made it a point to sing that line with vigor.)

The ‘gathering’ is over. Repeat, the ‘gathering’ is over.

What’s up with “gathering” songs like “For the Strength of the Hills” being in the hymnal? The gathering to Utah ended about a century ago, after all, and with a very few exceptions (like “Israel, Israel, God Is Calling”) the lyrics of that sort of song are painfully didactic and the melodies are boring. Really, not a good combination, especially when it goes along with a message that goes against current church practice.

Spirituality and boys

I’ve gone back and forth on posting (well, reposting, sort of) this, but i want to get people’s reactions on it.

A couple months ago, Heather the Mama Duk related this story in a comment to a post on this blog:

Not really on your point, but it reminded me of something I found totally weird.

My former visiting teaching companion in my old ward once said she felt people who were given several boys were the more spiritual people in the church. She said that she knew I must be a wonderful person because I have 3 boys. She wasn’t so much because she only had one boy.

Um, yeah. I seriously had no response. Totally speechless. It was the strangest conversation I’ve ever had with another Mormon. I mean, I’d had almost the exact same conversation a few days before with my next door neighbor, but she was Muslim so culturally her point made a lot more sense.

For the record, I do not believe at all that Mormons with lots of boys are any better than those who have lots of girls…or no kids at all.

I’m (re)posting this to find out if anyone out there has had similar experiences, or has heard similar things from other Mormons. Is this widespread and people just don’t say it to my face ’cause i have all daughters (and so therefore must be unspiritual)?* Or is this the sort of thing that comes about ’cause we’re gathering our converts from all the wrong neighborhoods?** Or is this actually an integral part of Mormon doctrine, and i’ve just managed to miss it in my readings of canon over the years?

* I mean, unspiritual for that reason, not for things like that i run a vaguely snarky blog.

** Not that i’d blame relatively-recently-appeared-in-Mormonism social attitudes that are clearly borrowed wholesale from evangelicalism on such things. No, of course not. Never.