When I think about the curricula available to evangelical homeschoolers, I instantly become guilty of several of the deadly sins. Oh, if I were a young earth creationist, the riches that would be mine!
Year: 2007
Book Review: Head Start with the Book of Mormon
Coming Home
Summer, 2003: I was a wreck.
True Confessions
Let not any man publish his own righteousness, for others can see that for him; sooner let him confess his sins, and then he will be forgiven and he will bring forth more fruit. (TPJS 194-195)
Hearing Voices
Two years ago when Segullah made its debut I fielded lots of questions. The most frequent was this: Why a new journal?
To the Mountains of Ephraim
This is a talk I gave in Sacrament Meeting today.
From the Archives: Pioneer Children
A week has passed since Pioneer Day. We remembered it here. In my sacrament meeting, where the speakers reminded us of President Hinckley’s meditation on the shade cast by the trees the pioneers planted and the “long shadow” they themselves cast in which we still find some shelter from the heat of the times.
The Hafens on Equality
ECS wrote about this article over at FMH [1]; I’d like to take a different perspective on it–I want to tell you what I liked about it. [2]
(Language of) Memory of Feeling
Memory is a poor substitute for feeling, and language is a poor substitute for memory; yet it is through those dual prisms that we translate the ephemeral raw material of emotion into something more permanent. And it is only that language of memory of feeling — awful, inadequate substitute that it is — that can be preserved and recounted and ultimately woven into narratives about life.
Fleshy Tablets
I have a tattoo on my left ankle.
Times & Seasons Welcomes Kathryn Lynard Soper
Times & Seasons is happy to welcome our newest guest blogger, Kathryn Lynard Soper. Kathryn is a mother of seven with a passion for writing and editing creative nonfiction. Raised in Silver Spring, Maryland, she’s lived in Utah since her BYU days (BA English, 1993). Founder and president of Segullah Group, Inc., Kathryn is editor-in-chief of Segullah: Writings by Latter-day Saint Women and editor of Gifts: Mothers Reflect on How Children with Down Syndrome Enrich Their Lives (Woodbine Press, 2007). She recently published personal essays inLiterary Mama, Meridian Magazine, and Mamazine, and is currently writing a memoir about her first year mothering her son Thomas, who has Down syndrome. In her leftover time she practices survival housekeeping and indulges her delusions of grandeur. Welcome Kathryn!
Field Notes #2
We might use language in our attempts to set boundaries, but language contains in microcosmic acts the macrocosmic thrust toward new form. November 4, 2006 The trail into the canyon is rougher at November’s threshold; run-off from recent storms took the same trail to the canyon’s main water course that I must take.
Mormon literature: the horror, the horror?
One of the frequent laments about Mormon literature is that so much of the Mormon experience is tied to spiritual experience, which is very difficult to describe in prose. Mormon authors facing that problem could learn a trick or two from Stephen King.
Chains
We sometimes hear two related but distinct chains of reasoning about the consequences of what are perceived as womens’ natural tendencies. Chain One: Women are naturally more spiritual than men.
Rescued From the Dustbin of History
And just where is the dustbin of history these days, you ask? It’s at Amazon, where the pitiless laws of supply and demand are on full display in the “used books” queue attached to every book title. That’s where I rescued a like-new copy of Claudia and Richard Bushman’s Building the Kingdom of God: A History of Mormons in America (OUP, 2001) for the price of $0.03. [And that’s three times what the lowest-priced copies are selling for today!]
Quothing the Raven
Some weeks ago a friend (an archaeologist and therefore a man of science) and I were discussing a nature writer who was coming to town to promote his latest book. I asked my friend if he liked this writer’s work. He said he did. I said that I did, too, and that I thought this writer one of the better nature writers out there. My friend agreed then added, “Although I wonder if a lot of them aren’t actually writing fiction.”
Three, Part One
Which Dialogue articles should the savvy blog-reader have hot-keyed and ready to go? What would the top three articles be, for useful citation in blog conversation?
Another Pew Study
See here.
Whose Woods Are These?
We moved into our house on the first weekend of January, 1980. One reason we chose it was that it reminded us of Pennsylvania, where we did graduate work. (The other reason? It was the only house we afford because the seller gave us great terms.)
Mail and Fee Mail
The postal rate for periodicals is expected to rise significantly this week, due to changes in the ways rates are calculated.
Hypothetical
What would happen if there was no question in the temple recommend interview about the Word of Wisdom–but there was one about home and visiting teaching?
Field Notes #1
Remember the silence around Pueblo Alto in Chaco, so heavy you felt blanketed by its snows, and the desert landscape spread out below, unmoving for miles? That was silence. Not even a breeze singing on the stones. June 8, 2006 Hiked in the rain this morning.
Before the cradle
There are songs that make me feel that God is all and I am nothing, and that God has given me everything and I deserve none of it, although that is far too precise and theological a description for an experience that is almost entirely pre-rational.
Sweat
All winter I plotted how to improve the garden, my first focal point for exercising “good stewardship” over the acre plus we moved to a year and a half ago. Last year’s garden had gone all right. I loved every minute in it, especially the time spent with animals, like Woodhouses’ toads and cliff swallows, which helped keep the garden in good order. But I got a late start and the harvest fell short. This year, I pushed to start my tomatoes on time along with other herbs and veggies that don’t mind sprouting indoors. I schemed how to improve our red, clayey soil. I saved money to hire a local man to till our ground.
The Problem of Counselling with Councils
Much of church government is carried out in councils and recently they have been received new emphasis, particularly from Elder Ballard. Councils are, however, a problem.
The Opening Up of Africa
An editorial by this title appeared in the Deseret News late in 1877.
Times and Seasons Welcomes PGK…
…or Patricia Gunter Karamesines, to those who know her outside the blogging world.
Mamadou
Mamadou has AIDS.
Guest Post: The Apostles’ Creed and the Book of Mormon
This post was written by Bryan Stout; his biography appears at the end of the post.
Missing Essentials
Once upon a time, there was a book called Essentials in Church History. It was first published in 1922 and authored by Joseph Fielding Smith, who was made Assistant Church Historian in 1906 and an Apostle in 1910 (then President of the LDS Church from 1970 to 1972). For many years, this book (in one of its many successive editions) was part of every ward library and was found in most LDS homes. It was sort of expected that Mormons would read the book and know their history. It may have been faith-promoting history, but at least it spent 500 pages telling the story.
Elder Busche on Women and Priesthood
When F. Enzio Busche was a temple president, he was once asked by a priesthood leader “when [he] thought the Church would receive revelation giving the priesthood to women.”