Be careful what you ask for

From a family member: Maybe global warming is actually caused by all the Mormons praying for a break from winter cold.

Given all my Utah friends complaining on Facebook about the snow they got recently,* i found this quite amusing.

* To which complaints my transplanted-to-Alaska self simply replies: Amateurs!

Does it actually work?

What is it with church leaders saying over and over again that we have to make sure new converts “get to the temple” so that they’ll stay active in the church? I mean, i’ve known plenty of inactive endowed members…

Basketball for girls (or not)

So there’s a longstanding Mormon meme about basketball being the default youth night activity for the young men when the leaders don’t have anything real planned.

But after having lived a couple places with a daughter in young women, might i suggest that “health and beauty nights” serve exactly the same purpose for that organization?

Reverence is more than just quietly sitting…

This has been making the rounds lately, and i liked it enough that i wanted to archive it here:

Q: What do you call a Primary child who’s been gagged and handcuffed?
A: Reverent.

Yeah, that seems to be a pretty good explanation of what “reverent” really means, no matter what they might say…

What’s up with the cities?

So i’ve been traveling to the east coast the last little bit (hence the lack of posts), and that led me to an observation:

     →We are such an incredibly non-urban church!

Or, more precisely, we just don’t seem to do central cities. I mean, the way conferences in my field work is that they generally end on Sunday around noon and then i spend my afternoon flying home so i don’t get to go to church, but this time i actually had the time to go to church after the meeting ended—but there wasn’t a Mormon congregation anywhere i could have gotten to.

And i was in downtown Boston, which is a pretty big city—over 625,000 people. Really? We only have one ward in the entire city,* and i’d’ve had to have figured out a way to the suburbs to get to another one?

And i’m not cherry-picking here—Philadelphia has a similarly meager presence in the city itself compared to the suburbs, as does Washington DC. Even here in Alaska, where we’ve got a good presence in Anchorage, the suburbs have more congregations than you’d expect given their comparative population.

And even in the heart of Mormon country, there’s gobs and tons of church units in Salt Lake City, but compared to its suburbs? Not even close.

So what is it about our church that doesn’t appeal to city dwellers so much?** Back when i was growing up on the east coast people used to chalk it up to our whiteness (what with the cities having such a large number of non-white individuals), but that kind of falls apart when you see the same pattern in Anchorage and Salt Lake City.

So: Any ideas?

* One English-speaking non-singles ward, that is.
** In the United States, at least. My intuition is that you’re more likely to see Mormonism as an urban church is some other parts of the world.

A very, very special night, apparently

So welcome to New Year’s Eve—the one holiday, according to the church’s Handbook, that, when it occurs on a Monday (as it does this year), church units are authorized to preempt family home evenings for a party.

I know it’s just me, but this just seems odd—not that there’s a carve-out for holidays and family home evening observance, but that if you’re going to pick exactly one holiday to allow that, it’d be this one. I mean, why not other holidays that already have a tradition of evening gatherings, like (in the United States) Memorial Day and Labor Day (and Independence Day, on years when it falls on a Monday), or explicitly religious holidays like Xmas Eve (when it falls on a Monday) or Easter Monday (in those jurisdictions where it’s celebrated)?

Purple

So this past Monday i knew that my workweek was going to be a bit unusual, and also i was a little behind on laundry,* so i spent a little extra time that morning planning what shirts i was going to wear each day through the weekend.

The shirt i planned for this Sunday is a purple one.** I look good in purple, after all, and so i have a handful of purple dress shirts anyway, so the odds were in that color’s favor to begin with.

Well, unbeknownst to me a group of women on the internet had decided to tweak the noses of Mormon social conservatives† by wearing trousers to church instead of skirts or dresses. Well, this started to be a thing, until it then devolved into really, really intense vitriol to the point of death threats(!) against those putting the whole thing together. It got bad enough that Facebook, never really known as a hotbed of civility, took down the Facebook page about it ’cause the discussionarguments were getting out of hand. (Way to be normal, fellow Mormons!)

Also unbeknownst to me, some men decided to get into the act by saying that they were going to wear purple ties or even purple shirts (gasp and horror!) in support of the trousers-wearing women.

So, once i learned about all this late last week, i was locked into wearing a purple shirt today, since i was short on shirts to begin with and i’d already worn the other good-looking dress shirts i had available.

This leads to an interesting question: Am i wearing a purple shirt in solidarity with women wearing trousers (no, it’s just that i look good in purple—see footnote †), and will people view my action as such (i do, after all, not infrequently wear purple shirts to church anyway)?

More to the point, though, i guess the big question is whether i really care what other people think about this.††

A postscript: A Facebook friend of mine says she’s going to wear a purple dress to church tomorrow, just to play with the ambiguity. Cheers for her!

* Hey, cut me a break here—we have four kids, and two of them go to a school with a moderately tight dress code, so laundry is always an issue, ’kay?

** Me, wear a white shirt to church? Oh, please don't make me giggle so hard.

† A goal i stand thoroughly in favor of, by the way. I explicitly take no position on this specific tweaking, but the idea of tweaking Mormon social conservatives generally? More often, and more power to you, that’s what i say.

†† No.‡

‡ Though i will admit to a bit of curiosity in the sense of the sociological experiment of it all.

Learning and growing

So people say that serving a full-time mission gets you to grow and learn in cool ways, but they generally mean spiritual things by that.

For me, i think that the most important thing i learned from being a full-time missionary was how to laugh. I come to this conclusion by recalling how many people commented on how after my mission i was able to give in fully to laughter when i thought something was funny, whereas beforehand i’d always been a bit reserved about laughter.

And i think that just that result alone would have been reason enough to have gone.

Why these differences?

So my oldest is a teenager, and as an active teenaged Mormon girl she’s working on her personal progress program (alliteration!), and so this last Sunday i went over the stuff she’s supposed to do for it with her, figuring out what she’s done and what she hasn’t, and so on.

The main thing i learned from this review: Some of the requirements involve some pretty insipid stuff. I mean, don’t get me wrong, some of the things she’ll be doing for this are actually really cool, but nearly all of them are basically to read a bunch of scriptures and reflect on how it’ll relate to your life as a wife and mother. Oh—and then write about it in your journal. If the number of repetitions is indicative of importance, then the most important thing she’ll ever do in her life is write about what she’s thinking in her journal. Gee, excitement. Or something.

Seriously: As long as the program for (most of) the boys of the church involves things like first aid and emergency preparedness and woodcarving and survival skills plus—maybe—some spiritual stuff that gets snuck in here and there, while the program for (all of) the girls of the church involves what it involves, well, some of us are going to continue to be bothered by the disparity.

Giving thanks

So in the spirit of the day,* a link to my favorite Thanksgiving song in the hymnal, even though it isn’t listed in the topical index as a song about giving thanks (and i may, in fact, be the only person who thinks that that’s what it’s about): Praise to the Lord, the Almighty.

(If you have a favorite song about giving thanks, whether from the hymnal or not, please feel free to mention it in the comments.)

* Today’s Thanksgiving Day in the United States.

I’m not really good at this

So what’s up with Mormons and this compulsive need we have to apologize for our speaking abilities when we get up and deliver a sacrament meeting address?

This suddenly became quite a bit more real (and not just annoying) to me since my oldest was asked to speak in sacrament meeting tomorrow. She practiced her speech in front of Jeanne and me this evening, and it was good and we told her so, except that we asked her to eliminate the sentence she opened with where she said she was nervous and downplayed expectations for the whole thing.

She objected to our request, saying—seriously!—that one has to start a sacrament meeting address that way.

I mean, kudos to her for such astute cultural observation skills, but is it really a good thing to tell people at the outset that you’re no good at what you’re doing? After all, such a claim is either wasted time since we’re all about to become painfully aware of it whether you say it or not, or it’s false modesty. Either way, not good.

(And it’s not just girls, or even just girls and women—men and boys do it too. Do similar things happen in other faith traditions where congregants regularly speak in services?)

p.s. She finally conceded our point after a couple minutes of back and forth on the issue. Score one for basic rhetorical competence.

Well, this was unexpected

In hopefully the last of my thoughts about the recent United States presidential election, a surprising result: Mitt Romney’s 2012 bid for president pulled in a smaller (only slightly smaller, but still smaller) percentage of the Mormon vote than George W. Bush’s 2004 bid.

Maybe affinity voting isn’t quite as much of a thing as i’d feared, after all.

Pulling rank

So now that Mitt Romney has lost the election for president of the United States, Senate Majority Leader (and Democrat!) Harry Reid continues to be the most highly-placed Mormon in the United States government.

I plan to find excuses to work that fact into conversations i have with other Mormons over the next week or two, just to see what sort of facial muscle twitches i can induce.

You or someone like you

As i write this, i have no idea who’s going to win the race for president of the United States.* I know a lot of people who are going to be voting one way or another, and i know some people are going to be voting for or against Mitt Romney because he’s a Mormon, and some who will be doing so in spite of that fact.

I would like to state, very bluntly and directly, that i find voting for or against someone based on their religious choices silly. It’s what we do, though, so whatever.

With that as background, though, the rest of this is written with the Mormons who are voting for Romney because he’s a Mormon in mind.

Many of the people i know who are voting for Romney are planning on voting for him at least in large part because he’s a Mormon. This makes sense, because a lot of the people in my social circles are Mormon, and affinity voting is a real thing.

Have they really thought this through, though? I still remember someone telling me during the presidential primary season back in 2008 that he was planning on voting for Romney, even though he (my friend) differed with him (Romney) on a lot of issues, “because Romney has the priesthood, and you’ve got to trust the priesthood.” Really?!? I mean, when did someone receiving the priesthood immediately make him trustworthy enough to be offered one of the two or three most powerful jobs on the planet based on that qualification alone?

Seriously, i don’t get it. I mean, i’ve known some priesthood holders who were jerks, and i’ve known some folks who don’t hold the priesthood who are role models at a level i merely hope to one day get somewhere close to.

So what’s with the Mormon affinity thing? Just because he’s one of ours, we suddenly get less critical? Not healthy, folks, not healthy at all.

* I tend to believe that statistically valid samples work, and so i have expectations, but that’s a whole different discussion right there.

Bless those hands!

Why do we so often pray before meals and ask God to “bless this food, that it will nourish and strengthen our bodies”?* I mean, we’re supposed to be thankful for our food, but instead we ask for it to be blessed.** So: Why?

* I’m deliberately ignoring the folks who pray for God to “bless the hands that prepared it”, ’cause it always leaves me wondering what’s wrong with my hands that they need such a targeted blessing.

** This is especially fun when it’s something that one might not ought even call food, like the pound cake and red Kool-Aid that was once served after a baptism i attended.

Halloween costumes

So the church doesn’t have a ban on cross-gender costumes (i.e., male people dressing up as females, female people dressing up as males), but every ward i’ve been in during my adult life* has sent out the word that such costumes wouldn’t be allowed at church events.

Is this one of those weird cases where there isn’t a de jure rule on what’s allowable in the church, but there is (at least in most cases) a de facto rule? What is everyone else’s experience?

* Possibly leaving aside my current ward—we opted out of our ward’s Halloween activity this year in favor of family stuff, so i didn’t pay attention to the rules here.

Does size matter?

Nothin’ but a rant today—several decades worth of bitterness, coming to the surface.

Also, this doesn’t have anything to do with Mormonism as such, but it would never have been an issue if i hadn’t grown up Mormon and thus been in contact with a lot of Utah Mormons during my growing up, so i’m putting it here anyway.

See, i grew up on the United States east coast—small rolling hills, with the Appalachian Mountains a quick drive to the west, and we went out that direction fairly frequently to spend time in the mountains. All was good.

But like i said above, i grew up Mormon, and at the time there were a lot of transplants from Utah who’d come to the area for work.* This wouldn’t have been a problem—and i’m all for cultural exchange—except that many of these Utahn transplants were so intensely dismissive of our moutains back east.

“Hah!” they’d scoff. “The Appalachians aren’t real mountains like we have back in Utah!” And this wasn’t an occasional thing—i got to hear this over and over and over.

Now, i’d never been to Utah,** but i’d seen pictures of the Rocky Mountains in Utah, and i knew that they were, well, rocky. So after a while i got tired enough of the mountain smugness from the Utahns around me that i started pointing out that their mountains were bigger, but at least mine had trees. The Utahns would consistently completely miss the point, generally answering that the Rockies have trees, too.***

Basically, there was no way to avoid being faced with expressions of superiority about how the mountains in Utah were better than the mountains in the east. (I have to say, i don’t actually know why those Utahns expressed such smugness about their hometown mountains, and my continued inability to figure out the answer to that question, even after living for a few years in Utah—where, by the way, i’d get smugness about how the Appalachians are so terribly tiny, as well, so it’s not something that came from people feeling the stress of living away from their hometowns—kind of bothers me.)

However…

I've lived a few places now in my life, both mountainous and flat. My adopted hometown, though, is in Alaska, where we have mountains.

The nearest mountains are the Chugach Range, which don’t go up to as high an elevation as Utah’s Wasatch Front, but they’re nearly exactly the same size—it’s just that the base of the Chugach is at sea level, while the Wasatch cheats by having its base start higher.

No problem, though. What i’d really like to draw attention to is the following picture, taken from my adopted hometown. It’s not the greatest picture ’cause there was a bit of haze the day i took it, but you can still make out…

Left to right: Foraker, Hunter, Denali

…that it’s Denali, the highest peak in North America, which stands more than a mile taller than King’s Peak, the highest point in Utah. And Denali doesn’t cheat, either—its base is low enough that it’s actually the largest base-to-peak mountain on land anywhere in the entire world.

Or, in other words, and i mean this most sincerely and in as much politeness as i can muster:

     ☞ Suck it, Utah.

That is all.

* The church where i grew up produces its own Mormons much more than was the case back then. Careful, Utahns—eventually the rest of us are going to take over!

** First time in Utah: the Missionary Training Center (which i’m not sure counts anyway).

*** Um, have any of you actually seen Utah’s Rocky Mountains? No. Yes, there are trees, but compare it to the Appalachians. The Utah Rockies have trees at the level of a technicality. Sorry, but thanks for playing.

What if?

Given my conversations with people, i’m starting to think that there are a number of US Mormons at all points among the political spectrum who are starting to worry that Mitt Romney will end up winning the US presidency…and fall flat on his face, as a bit of an embarrassment to us all.

I mean, here we were all comfortable thinking he was our edition of Al Smith, a sacrificial lamb to pave the way for later Mormons who might want to seek the presidency, but no, here he has to go and start creeping up in the polls—so let the stressing out begin.

Sorta-liveblogging general conference: Sunday afternoon session

So here we are for the final general session. (Worn out yet?) As with all of these entries, if you want to get these entries in chronological order, you should go to the bottom of the post and scroll upwards. And with that…

Thomas S. Monson (president of the high priesthood)

• “Let us not be critical and judgmental—let us be tolerant.” So does this put a fork in sacrament meeting speakers using the “we first endure, then pity, then embrace” line ever again, then?
• “None of us is immune” to an unexpected calling. Uh-oh…
• And we’re done—ponder on what’s been taught, be good, and be better than you were before.

David A. Bednar (of the quorum of apostles)

• There is a relationship between receiving a testimony of Jesus Christ and being converted to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
• Any honest seeker of truth can gain an testimony and become converted.
• Speaking of which, given the way he just pulled out textual parallelism in his use of the phrase “honest seeker”, i suspect that he is, as is so often the case, delivering an address that's intended to be read more than heard.
• Testimony is the beginning of full conversion.
• Testimony is important, but insufficient to give us enough spiritual strength—we need to be converted.
• From my oldest: “Didn’t he give this exact same talk last year?”
• I know this makes me evil and all, but strained interpretations of the parable of the ten virgins really do nothing for me.

Don R. Clarke (of the quorums of seventy)

• What do we think about during the sacrament? Well, when i’m taking the sacrament, i’m generally thinking about whether my youngest is taking the opportunity to crawl under the seats.
• We should care about the sacrament—it’s not just a chance for a (really, really tiny) snack in the middle of church.
• By cleansing yourself through the sacrament each week, you ensure that after you die, your spirit will be clean.

Daniel L. Johnson (of the quorums of seventy)

• We need to become like Jesus, which is not easy (though necessary).
• Trials aren’t limited to things like death of a loved one or the loss of a crop, but can include worldly popularity, artistic or athletic talent, or such.

Marcus B. Nash (of the quorums of seventy)

• What is it about Mormons and faith/mountain analogies?
• How long has it been since we’ve had a Martin and Willie handcart company story in conference?
• Wait a minute! “The Lord’s antidote for doubt is” [drum roll] belief? I mean, isn’t that kinda tautological?

Russell T. Osguthorpe (general president of the Sunday school)

• And here’s the official rollout of the church’s new youth curriculum. (And it’s about time, i say.)
• Teaching as an active work, not a semi-passive pursuit.
• The one who learns has to decide to learn, but they have to be taught by those who can teach.
• “We want our youth to understand.” (May have gotten a word or two wrong, but the content is correct.)
• Someone online just pointed out that a new curriculum is absolutely needed, what with Missionary Training Center stays being shortened.

Richard G. Scott (of the quorum of apostles

• Wow—Sunday afternoon, and this is the first extended mention of temple work?
• Interesting idea, that doing both family history work and proxy temple work for those you find brings you “both halves of the blessing”.
• Don’t selfishly hold on to names for proxy work, let others help out.
• I love it when he talks about his wife. You can hear the love and pain and joy in his voice. It’s always a good reminder that these aren’t just guys in suits, they’re real people.

Robert D. Hales (of the quorum of apostles)

• Is it just me, or is he looking a lot healthier than he did last conference?
• The grace of God is important, don’t ignore it!
• This is sounding like it’s going to be the obligatory general conference “no, we are Xian, so there!” address.
• Good question: Given that we are Xians, “what kind of Xians are we?”
• He’s framing this as a call to repentance for all Xians, not just Mormons. Interesting.
• I’m quite liking this address. That makes four favorites by now.
• Lots of explicit calls to (temporal and spiritual) service this conference, aren’t there?

Opening couple of choir songs

• Okay, what’s with the amazingly slow arrangements? MoTab was all upbeat and cheery yesterday, and today they’re trying to put me to sleep.

[didn’t catch the name], opening prayer

• Okay everybody, admit it, you all said “amen” after the first time he said “in the name of Jesus Christ”, didn’t you?

Sorta-liveblogging general conference: Sunday morning session

And now for the Sunday of general conference, or, as it’s better known to lots of Mormon men, “no tie day”.

The Sunday morning session of general conference is, i strongly suspect, the most widely watched session (i have no idea where i’d look for good evidence of that, though). It seems like there’s been a concerted effort to make sure that any big announcements get made in other sessions (cf. Monson, Thomas S., Saturday Morning Session, October 2012), but i feel like this session still has the cachet of being the “big” one.

But whether this really is the big leagues or not, it’s here. To get my comments, scroll down to the bottom of the post and move upward to get things in order. (or you can just be a rebel and start here. Doesn’t matter to me either way, really.)

[didn’t catch the name], closing prayer

• I think he may have touched on every address this session—way to prove you were listening, dude!

Closing song

• Sorry, can’t help it, but i keep hearing “She’ll Be Comin’ ’Round the Mountain When She Comes” every time the organ refrain kicks in.

Thomas S. Monson (president of the high priesthood)

• We are blessed with much, but it is hard to look around us and not be discouraged—so we need to step back and look at the blessings in our lives.
• Hurrah! For encouraging optimism and happiness with regard to “the world”.
• The more we pay attention to promptings from the Lord, the more the Lord will entrust us with divine errands.
• I feel like President Monson had moved away lately from the story-based style he historically used. Not this time, though!
• “He attributed the solution to luck. But all of the youth knew better.” That’s actually a good reminder of the way people can observe the same phenomenon and come to very different conclusions of its provenance.

Jeffrey R. Holland (of the quorum of apostles)

• “I think we sometimes forget just how inexperienced [the eleven apostles right after Jesus’s death] were.”
• Fun job pulling the story of the eleven after Jesus’s death into modern language.
• You know, i feel kind of sheepish in having to admit that i never caught the parallel between the initial meeting of the fishers-to-be-apostles and Jesus, and their meeting in the same way after Jesus’s resurrection. I’m always happy when i learn simultaneously obvious and new stuff about the scriptures.
• I love exegesis. I don’t know, if this is what we usually got every week from our speakers maybe i wouldn’t find it as cool. But coming from the Mormon tradition, this approach rocks.
• And now he makes the turn and applies it to our lives today. Really amazing work.
• A baptism isn’t supposed to just change the life of the convert, but also the person performing the ordinance.
• Wow. This one, President Eyring’s from last night, Sister Burton’s from earlier this session…Anytime you get three addresses that are that impressive, it's been an amazing conference, you know? I’m not even going to try to pick a favorite. (And we’re not done yet.)

Walter F González (of the presidency of the seventy)

• The gift of the Holy Ghost as a gateway to knowledge.
• We can learn knowledge that cannot be gained through modern technology or secular study. Interesting claim about the separation of spiritual and secular knowledge buried in there, really.
• When are we going to let conference speakers speak in their native languages? It’d create some difficulties for those in the Conference Center itself, but i’d love for people like Elder González to be able to express themselves in a more natural way.

Linda K. Burton (relief society general president)

• I’m a sociolinguist. As a result, her Wasatch Front vowel system is going to be astonishingly distracting for me throughout this entire address.
• Stopping bullying by being nice to the bully? Wouldn’t work every time, of course, but a good reminder that it should be in our toolkits.
• Grrrr…Yeah, i know how it was intended, and i know I’m taking this wrong, but as a father of daughters, I’m tired of being told that the personal progress program is intended to help my children become good mothers. It’s teaching them to become good human beings, thankyouverymuch.
• Interesting—she often adds “and women” to scriptures that speak about things like “all men”. I like it.
• Sweet! A pay it forward story! (And, as my wife points out, someone is now sitting somewhere saying, “That was me!”)
• Wow. Really, really great address.

Choir interlude

• And we get a vocal solo!

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

• He’s really not looking well. I’ve listened to addresses of his from past decades, and he was an incredibly vibrant speaker. A good reminder, i suppose, that one person really can life multiple lifetimes.
• “If you have made no mistakes, you do not need the atonement.” This is, of course, as he points out, moot, since we all have made mistakes, and so are all in need of the atonement.
• “We do not know how, exactly, the Lord accomplished the atonement.” Bet it won’t stop folks in gospel doctrine classes from insisting they do, though!

Henry B. Eyring (of the first presidency)

• He’s into the family stories this weekend, isn’t he
• You know, speaking as an academic, going from tenured prof at an R1 like Stanford to president of a junior college like Ricks College isn't a usual career path, but i don't know that it would be seen as a (worldly) downgrade in the way he presents it.
• We can create barriers between ourselves and God. I wonder, is that phenomenon always quite so one-way?
• I like the idea that it can sometimes take a change of focus on our part (like in the story of his daughter-in-law, where she had to move from a hyperfocus on motherhood to one on service generally).
• “The Lord’s delays can seem long. Some can last a lifetime…[but] we can be sure that he always keeps his promises.” Deep and heavy words there.
• I love this Jesus’s statement on the separation of the wicked and the righteous at the final judgment, ’cause the righteous have no idea that they've done good, it was just part of them. “A change in your very nature”, in President Eyring’s words, anyone?
• Moral of the story: Service is the grand key to communion with God.

Marlin K. Jensen (formerly of the quorums of seventy), opening prayer

• Yes, he’s giving a prayer in conference. Can we stop the whisper campaign now?
• The trend is for general conference prayers to be shorter lately, which made this one seem longer than it was.