Some of us like to throw in some Latin from time to time.
Year: 2005
Ashes to Ashes
The idea of Ash Wednesday is to mark a period–a period of mourning and chastening, discipline and devotion–of 40 days before Easter. The significance of the 40 days goes without saying. But why ashes?
Fat Tuesday & Lent
Mardi Gras is early this year. Now I am scrambling to find a King Cake in Madison. I lived in Louisiana for one year, and I was fascinated by the Christian calendar. So how many of you, besides Kristine, are looking forward to Lent?
Thanks, Eric
We’ve all enjoyed the posts by Eric James Stone, who has been our guest blogger for the past weeks. All good things must come to an end, however, Eric’s guest-blogging stint among them. Fortunately, you can still read Eric’s posts over at his own blog. And you can read some of his stories in print (1 and 2) as well.
Academic Freedom & the Search for Truth
The University of Wisconsin takes great pride in its tradition of academic freedom. As a new professor, I was told repeatedly the story of Professor Richard T. Ely (watch the video), a labor economist who was accused by Oliver E. Wells, Wisconsin’s State Superintendent of Public Instruction and a member of the Board of Regents, of providing a moral justification for strikes and boycotts.
Finding God in Chess and the Appellate Brief
When my professional life is going well it consists of reading and writing appellate briefs. Fortunately, this is not nearly as pathetic as it sounds.
The Gospel in Paradise
For nine days at the end of January, my wife and kids and I were on the Big Island of Hawai’i, enjoying paradise in the company of my parents, who own a time-share condominium there and visit there every January. They’d decided that it’d been too long since they’d spent any amount of time alone with us or our children, and invited us to come along; we didn’t say no. We’d been to Hawaii before, but this was, without doubt, a vacation to remember: delicious fruit, beautiful weather, gorgeous scenery, long talks with my mom and dad, swimming and golf and snorkeling, and a night of kalua pig. For photographs, see here; for my typically long-winded ruminations on Hawai’i and vacations in general, see here. But for here at T&S, some thoughts about the gospel and the church in paradise. Of course, a couple of week-long visits doesn’t give me any expertise, though my parents have spent enough time there to supplement my observations somewhat. Still, let me throw some things out; perhaps I’ll be able to come up with something controversial enough to get Keith or other knowledgeable folks to chime in.
Unrequited Love
I just finished a ravishing little novel called “The Confessions of Max Tivoli.” It begins, “We are each the love of somebody’s life.”
Guest Blogging
In a reversal of the usual pattern (T & S asking other bloggernackers to guest-blog), I’ve just had the chance to be a guest-blogger myself. Yep, I was asked if I would do a guest post over at Various Stages of Mormondom, on the interesting topic: “Is it hard for you to say you’re Mormon? What baggage comes with that label?” Here is my post as a guest blogger at Various Stages — T & S readers may find it interesting. And don’t forget to check out the rest of the posts there on the same topic (VSM has seven bloggers post each week, all on the same topic). Thanks to the VSM crew for my first chance to be a guest blogger!
From the Pulpit: “A Mantic Celebration of the Holy Spirit”
“I wish to celebrate this morning the reality of the often ignored and too little heralded but very real outpouring of the Spirit of God upon the believing inhabitants of earth–right now, this morning, in the early evening of the last dispensation.”
268M in 2080
Most members of the Church are probably familiar with the estimate made by (nonLDS) sociologist Rodney Stark that, if current growth patterns hold, there will be 268 million members of the Church by the year 2080.
Sunday School Lesson 7
Lesson 7: Various scriptures on the First Principles and Ordinances Before I offer some study questions, let me say why I object to this year’s way of organizing our Sunday School lessons.
Interlocking directorates?
With the recent proliferation of group blogs, we’ve got a very complicated, interlocking blogger chain going on here: Kristine blogs at T & S. And also at BCC, where Steve and Karen also blog. Steve and Karen also blog at Kulturblog, where Bryce also blogs. Bryce also blogs at Millennial Star, where Matt and Adam also blog. And Matt and Adam blog here at T & S — we’re back where we began! Plus, Russell and Greg also post at Kulturblog as well as T & S; plus, Steve and Karen (BCC/KB), Bryce (Ms. Tar/KB), Clark, Ben S., Ryan, Grasshopper (all Ms. Tar), William Morris (KB) were T & S guest bloggers; plus there’s the Archipelago (Rusty is M-Arch/KB; Dave is M-Arch/BCC). And I’m probably missing a few connections. Ahh, what a tangled web.
An Anecdote on Obedience
Can y’all stomach a mission story right now?
From the Archives: Church Members and Financial Scams
Following up on Nate’s good idea of links to posts that date to the early days of T & S (when we had very few readers), here is a post of my own from the early days of T & S, suggesting some possible reasons why church members seem to be unusually susceptible to financial scams. (continue to original post…)
From the Archives: Has Mormon History Taught Us Anything?
Times & Seasons has now been around for more than a year and in that time our readership has gone from a dozen or two visitors a day to somewhere between 1500 and 2000 visitors a day. Hence, there are some early posts that I suspect many readers never saw. Here is one post from those early days, that I think some of our new readers might be interested in. (continue to original post…)
Peter
Today is my son Peter’s birthday. He is named for Peter in the New Testament, because, while Jesus may have loved John the most, I love Peter best of all. I love him because he is so willing to get wet.
Remember the Pain
Alma has a great description of repentance. He writes: And now, behold, when I [repented], I could remember my pains no more; yea, I was harrowed up by the memory of my sins no more. Is this a good thing?
Dealing with Abuse in the Church
Over the last few years, there has been a barrage of accusations, civil suits, and settlements involving child sex abuse that have crippled Catholic dioceses all over the country, both financially and spiritually. Our Church has experienced the same types of issues, but, so far, on a much smaller scale.
Violating the First Amendment
What I’m about to tell you are two true stories in which public employees clearly violated Supreme Court rulings on the First Amendment. The names and a few other details have been changed to protect the guilty.
Fireworks
The new group blogs in the ‘nacle are positively hopping. At Various Stages, the VSOM-ers are discussing the topic “Is it hard for you to say you’re Mormon? What baggage comes with that label?” Becca F. launches the topic with characteristic aplomb, and Sara and Kaycee continue on the high notes. (And on the question, so far the jury is very much out — no two answers are the same or even all that similar.) Meanwhile, at Ms. Tar, Grasshopper asks whether revelation is really intended to answer questions, and Baron discusses the value of simple answers to complex questions. (And while we’re at it — when are the rest of the muckety-mucks over there going to adopt nifty monikers? Hmm, then again, if Ryan Bell is coining the nicknames, perhaps we’re best off leaving well enough alone . . .)
12 Questions for Philip Barlow
We are pleased to announce Philip Barlow as our next participant in the Twelve Questions series. My initial encounter with Professor Barlow’s work was almost seven years ago as a first year Bible student at Yale Divinity School.
A Memory of Professor Farnsworth
Yesterday I received an email announcing that my Contracts professor, E. Allan Farnsworth, had passed away. He was a genuinely kind person and a prolific scholar, and a generation of lawyers has relied on his treatise to get through consideration, the parol evidence rule, and the statute of frauds. I’ll always remember him, though, for scaring the heck out of me as a first year.
Marrow and Fatness: LDS and BMI
My husband’s grandfather once uttered a one-liner that has made its way into family lore. Surveying a particularly, uh, well-endowed session of temple patrons, he said, “We may be a chosen people, but we are a corpulent people.”
The Failure of Times & Seasons or the Danger of the Daily Me
With the launching of Millennial Star, it now looks as though there are two group blogs that have more or less spun off from Times and Seasons, one of which tries to position itself to the “left” of T&S and one of which tries to position itself to the “right” of T&S. Or so it seems to me. Both blogs include bloggers who also blog at T&S (traitors!). Does any of this mean anything?
Blogscars
And speaking of other blogs, congratulations to our Blogscar* winners: Nate (Best Blogger), Kris and Jim (Best Posts, though Kris’s is at an unauthorized location). In the blogs category, congratulations as well, to Heather, Lisa, and, well, us. Yay, us! We rock! I’ll accept the award on behalf of the crew, and say that I’d like to thank my Mom, and Dad, and my old stake president, and my mission trainer, and Al Gore for inventing the internet so that we could blog in the first place, and my kids, and my co-bloggers, and my goldfish, and . . . — *The joy at winning the award is mitigated by the silliness of the name “blogscar” which sounds like either a bad attempt to say “boxcar” or perhaps the mark of a wound received from blogging. Perhaps a better handle can be found?
Eight Questions at BCC
Steve Evans at BCC has just launched a groundbreaking new idea for the bloggernacle: Interviews with interesting LDS figures! He’s starting with an “Eight Questions” interview with Dr. Brian Birch, director of the Religious Studies program at UVSC. The interview is quite interesting. And as for the source of Steve’s trailblazing ingenuity . . . well, I think I can tell you this — Steve confided to me, he feels that that kind of good idea must have come from some higher power.
“Told you I did…
Reckless are [they]. Now… matters are worse.” “That [blog] was our last hope.” “No…. There is another.”
Seaweed, Fermented Cabbage & the Spirit of God
I find that in those dark times of the soul when I need peace and a nearness to God, I turn to seaweed and fermented cabbage.
12 Questions for Terryl Givens
Professor Terryl Givens–who has another book out within the last month, The Latter-day Saint Experience in America (Greenwood Press)–has been kind enough to answer twelve questions for us.