President Thomas S. Monson:

– watching TV, many of the tragedies reported all trace back to the same root cause: anger — father’s abuse of child — gang violence — shooting of a woman by her estranged husband — coverage of wars and conflicts throughout the world — “Cease from anger and forsake wrath”

– story of counseling a couple whose marriage was stressed by a tragedy in their past: heated argument while traveling together resulted in father throwing a toy and hitting his 18-month-old son, causing irreversible brain damage

– anger doesn’t solve anything, but it can destroy everything — story of Heber J. Grant:  “a man is a fool who takes an insult that isn’t intended” — “Can a man be angry and not sin? Let not the sun go down on your wrath.” — is it possible to feel the spirit of God when we are angry? — “There shall be no disputations among you, for he that has the spirit of contention is not of me, but is of the devil . . . this is not my doctrine, to stir up the hearts of men one against the other” Read more »

After all the hype and controversy leading up to the “very special” episode of “Big Love”, there has been a resounding, nay deafening silence in the aftermath. I don’t know if the show’s ratings were significantly higher than normal, but news and media converage pretty much vanished completely within 24 hours of the show being aired. And remarkably, the world hasn’t come to an end. In fact, as far as I know, no locust have descended upon the HBO offices in the Time-Warner Building in NYC or upon the Playtone offices, wherever they happen to be.

I think the take-away is not to hyperventilate or overreact. As Nibley famously wrote,

“Even though everyone may discover what goes on in the temple, and many have already revealed it, the important thing is that I do not reveal these things; they must remain sacred to me. I must preserve a zone of sanctity which cannot be violated whether or not anyone else in the room has the remotest idea what the situation really is. for all my covenants are between me and my Heavenly Father, all others being present only as witnesses. . . .No matter what happens, it will, then, always remain secret; only I know exactly the weight and force of the covenants I have made — I and the Lord with whom I have made them — unless I choose to reveal them. If I do not, then they are secret and sacred no matter what others may say or do. Anyone who would reveal these things has not understood them, and therefore that person has not given them away. You cannot reveal what you do not know!” — “Return to the Temple”, Temple and Cosmos (Deseret Book/FARMS, 1992), pp. 64-65

One thing I think we will have to adjust to is now that “Big Love” has broached this subject, I expect to see LDS temple robes and ceremonies appear in other shows and movies as well. The best reaction is to ignore it and move on.  ..bruce..

I ran across this YouTube video over at Meridian. I can’t embed it here, but it’s worth taking a few minutes to go over and watch it.

I grew up in an era where the nuclear threat was massive and real, when the long and bloody Vietnam war was going on (I nearly became part of it myself), and when the former USSR was growing in influence. In the same General Conference talk (April 1979) excerpted in the video above, Elder Bruce R. McConkie spoke of “the atomic holocausts that surely shall be.”

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Orson Scott Card has written two columns over at Mormon Times, the first decrying the generally wretched quality of lessons in Elders Quorum and its possible impact on the (in)activity of newly-minted 18-year-old elders, and the second making some active suggestions on how to improve said teaching. A third column (on resources for teaching) is forthcoming.

(Interesting factlet: I had Card as an Elders Quorum instructor one summer while we were both undergrads at BYU. He was an excellent teacher even then, so I give what he says a lot of weight.)

Card’s observations and recommendations dead-on and worth reading. My solution, however, is more direct: the Church needs to bring back (in some form) its original Teacher Development course from the 1970s.

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Yesterday morning, I walked two miles. This was my latest effort to restart a regime to address various health and fitness problems I have. I thought, “If I can just do this daily, it will make a real difference.”

Late yesterday evening, while turning off lights and generally shutting things down for the night, I walked through our darkened living room and smashed the third and fourth toes on my right foot against the heavy metal base of our living room lamp. I don’t think I broke them outright, but they were throbbing badly as I slowly fell asleep last night.

This morning, when I woke up, they were still throbbing badly. My first thought was, “Crud, I’m not going to be able to walk today.” However, I happened to change the TV channel from the morning news to TCM, where “They Were Expendable” was showing. This is a 1945 film, clearly made while World War II was still going on, about the Japanese invasion of the Philippines that commenced the same day as the attack on Pearl Harbor, leading to the US retreat from the Philippines and the surrender of some 80,000 American and Filipino troops left behind to the Japanese.

“OK, then,” I thought. “Maybe walking with sore toes isn’t so tough.” I popped several ibuprofin, did a few chores around the house while waiting for them to kick in, put on my walking shoes, and went out. Yep, my toes hurt for about the first 1/2 mile, but then settled down to quiet twinges. And I did the full two mile walk.

Decades ago, I heard a talk by Truman Madsen in which he quipped, “Why hide your light under a bushel when a thimble will do?” Similarly, I think we are often deflected or detered by mere speed bumps rather than insurmountable obstacles. Satan is nothing if not efficient — he wastes no more effort on us than we require him to expend. And, sadly, those requirements are often quite modest — opposition in small things.

My New Year’s resolutions, then, are not wholesale changes in my life. Instead, they are to identify those speed bumps that I shy away from and instead drive right over them. There are several things that I can and should be doing that really require no great change or effort other than to actually do them. We’ll see how things go this year, but I think they’ll go a lot better than things have gone for a while.  ..bruce..

My great-grandfather, George Charlow Cosgrove, was by all accounts a colorful character. He was in law enforcement in Deadwood, South Dakota, during the same time period as the HBO TV series “Deadwood“, which may give you some idea of his life’s milieu.  I never met him — he died sixteen years before I was born — but I knew his daughter, my grandmother, Florence Imogene Cosgrove Webster, very well. Here’s a bit of what she had to write about him (after the jump):

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There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

– Sara Teasdale

[cross posted from Adventures in Mormonism]

[full size (3008x2000) original photograph]

[cross-posted from my blog]

Come, thou Fount of every blessing,
tune my heart to sing thy grace;
streams of mercy, never ceasing,
call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
mount of thy redeeming love.

This morning , I was listening as usual to the 7 am rebroadcast of last week’s “Music and the Spoken Word” on BYU TV (I’m usually at church when the 9:30 am live broadcast comes on). The closing number was “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing”, always one of my favorite hymns (and one that needs to be in our LDS hymn books). By the end of the performance, I was weeping — and not (just) because of the beauty of the arrangement and the singing. This hymn, like few others, speaks to my deepest struggles and frustrations in my own personal life.

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I, Zeniff, having been taught in all the language of the Nephites, and having had a knowledge of the land of Nephi, or of the land of our fathers’ first inheritance, and having been sent as a spy among the Lamanites that I might spy out their forces, that our army might come upon them and destroy them — but when I saw that which was good among them I was desirous that they should not be destroyed. . . .

And yet, I being over-zealous to inherit the land of our fathers, collected as many as were desirous to go up to possess the land, and started again on our journey into the wilderness to go up to the land . . .

And I went into the king [of the Lamanites], and he covenanted with me that I might possess the land of Lehi-Nephi, and the land of Shilom. And he also commanded that his people should depart out of the land, and I and my people went into the land that we might possess it. . . .

Now it was the cunning and the craftiness of king Laman, to bring my people into bondage, that he yielded up the land that we might possess it. . . .

Therefore it came to pass that king Laman began to stir up his people that they should contend with my people; therefore there began to be wars and contentions in the land. For, in the thirteenth year of my reign in the land of Nephi, away on the south of the land of Shilom, when my people were watering and feeding their flocks, and tilling their lands, a numerous host of Lamanites came upon them and began to slaw them, and to take off their flocks, and the corn of their fields. . . . (from Mosiah 9)

Discuss, with extra credit for any modern-day applications (keep it civil, folks).  ..bruce..

P.S. I should have noted this in the original post: the phrase “useful idiot” has a long history in geopolitics.

Our high priests group lesson today was on the Atonement. Our instructor, a lawyer, asked a question that frankly had the rest of us stumped — or, at least, unwilling to purely speculate.

The question: What qualified Christ to become part of the Godhead while still an unembodied spirit? (Yes, he was the firstborn among God’s spirit children, but why? Was he that much better as an pre-spirit intelligence? If so, why?)

For that matter, what qualified the Holy Ghost to likewise be selected as part of the Godhead while an unembodied spirit?

Thoughts?  ..bruce..

A few months back, I noticed that my own LDS blog was getting hits for “Mormon Anti-Christ”, apparently from people looking for the Mormon concept of a latter-day Anti-Christ. I wrote up a post on the subject, which I then ended with this post-script:

I get the impression from what little research I’ve done that Catholics are much more skeptical [than Evangelists] about the idea of there being a literal, individual, powerful AntiChrist as a precursor to the Savior’s second coming — probably because, as the Catholic Encyclopedia entry cited above states, Protestants have been claiming for centuries that the Pope is the AntiChrist. What makes that so interesting is that in most horror movies about the rise of the AntiChrist — e.g., “The Omen” — it seems that it’s almost always the Catholics who are fighting against him. On the other hand, it seems like there’s often a group of renegade or corrupted Catholic priests and nuns who are supporting and protecting him. So for all us Mormons who complain about media bias, realize that it could be a lot worse — no one’s made a movie that shows the AntiChrist being born in Spanish Fork, attending BYU, and serving an LDS mission, before going to work for the Marriott Corporation, all the while being protected by a 21st century band of Danites. Yet. Hmm…maybe I’ll write a screenplay.

I even have a title for it: “Oh My Heck!”

OK, time to have some fun. Let’s hear some of your ideas for fleshing out this mythical screenplay. ..bruce..

P.S. I don’t have permission to add categories, so I’ll have to let the MM powers-that-be decide how to categorize this one.  ..bfw..

It struck me this morning that what may appear at first glance to be a concession by the FLDS Church to government pressure may actually be a very clever legal ploy. First, here’s the (apparent) concession:

The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints made the startling announcement Monday that it will no longer allow underage girls to marry adults within their sect. . . .

The announcement applies to both the group’s “spiritual” unions and legal marriages. The minimum age to marry in Texas is 16, but only with parental permission.

Note that there is no promise of an end to polygamous marriages — just that only girls of the age of legal consent will be allowed to marry, either legally (in the eyes of Texas) or ’spiritually’ (meaning 2nd and subsequent wives).

By taking this step — and assuming it’s enforced — the FLDS Church has removed virtually any cause of action for the state of Texas. If the girls getting ‘married’ (legally or otherwise) are of age, then Texas can’t claim sexual, physical, or emotional abuse absent some compelling evidence — and Texas has come up not only empty but looking a bit embarrassed on that issue. And since the FLDS Church (to my knowledge) doesn’t atttempt to file the ’spiritual’ marriages as legals ones with the state of Texas, then Texas can’t bring bigamy charges.

There is a bit of a gap in this strategy as it stands. Texas allows marriage at age 16 (with parental consent), but it does not allow sex outside of marriage between a 16-year-old and an adult. Since Texas does not recognize the ’spiritual’ marriages as legal marriages, it could still prosecute any ’spiritual’ marriage involving a 16-year-old as statutory rape. However, if the FLDS Church simply bans ’spiritual’ marriages for anyone under the age of 17, then Texas is left without a cause.

What could Texas do at that point? I’m not sure they could bring up US v. Reynolds, which applied to actual marriages. I don’t know that Texas has any statutory prohibition against “unlawful cohabitation”, and if it did, I suspect it would get thrown out of court faster than you can say “Lawrence v. Texas.” At some point here, Texas’s insistence on constant monitoring of the YFZ compound will provide credible grounds for complaints that the FLDS Church being singled out religious persecution and will likely bring that monitoring to an end.

In short, Texas’s heavy-handed (and overturned) reaction to what appears to have been a series of crank phone calls may result in de facto legal acceptance of polygamy, so long as no attempt is made to file the additional marriages with state authorities.

Thoughts? ..bruce..

UPDATED: Here’s a news story that shows — if you read carefully — just how tough it’s going to be for Texas to pursue any criminal action for past acts. Note the passing comment that the calls from ‘Sarah’ (the allegedly abused teenager whose calls started this whole raid) continued after all the children had been removed from the ranch.  ..bfw..

I woke up this morning to the local (Denver Channel 2) news reporting that a Colorado Springs woman had been arrested for “false reporting” in connection with the Texas raid on the FLDS compound in Texas. I couldn’t find information on that channel’s website, but one of the TV stations down in Colorado Spring had this story on their website:

Colorado Springs Police say a woman arrested for false reporting in Colorado Springs has not been charged at this time in connection with the Texas case.

Springs Police confirm the Texas Rangers were in the city Wednesday as part of their investigation into the compound. A spokesperson for the Texas Rangers confirms they have had several calls about an out-of-state arrest, but they have no comment at this time.

Springs Police will only confirm that 33-year-old Rozita Swinton was arrested Wednesday evening for False Reporting in connection with a February incident in Colorado Springs.

There is no word on what her connection might have been in the Texas case, in which hundreds of children were seized from a polygamist compound.

This came after someone claiming to be a 16-year-old girl called an abuse hot line claiming her husband — a 50-year-old member of the sect — beat and raped her. The girl has yet to be identified by investigators.

As if this whole situation weren’t complicated and messy enough. ..bruce..

Like most Latter-day Saints in North America (and probably quite a few around the world), I have watched the events in Texas regarding the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS Church) unfold with a mixture of feelings. I believe there are some serious moral, legal, and Constitutional issues here, but I will leave that discussion in the hands of those better equipped to argue on both sides.

Even with my deep-rooted commitment to religious pluralism — which predates my own conversion to the LDS Church — I find myself wincing over the various details that keep coming forth in the aftermath of the raids on the FLDS compound. I worry both for those who have been caught up in this as well as for my own church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), since this will only serve to reinforce unfounded stereotype already prevalent about “Mormons” not just in the US but around the world

What has struck me, though, is that the FLDS Church, and particularly the Yearning For Zion (YFZ) group in Texas, reflects what I suspect many ‘liberal’ or ‘disaffected’ Mormons fear the LDS Church would become were it not for their valiant efforts. I say that somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but only somewhat; many who grumble or rant about ’savage misogyny’ or ‘patriarchal abuse’ in the LDS Church likely feel that the FLDS Chuch is where we’re headed unless Church leaders pay attention to them.

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Please join us in welcoming our newest permablogger, bfwebster. This is his inaugural post at Mormon Mentality.

Millennium — A thousand years of genealogy, temple work, proselytizing, and filling out reports, a prospect that can make wickedness and destruction look downright enticing. — Orson Scott Card, Saintspeak: A Mormon Dictionary (Orion Books, 1981)

Let me start by clarifying my premises. I fully believe in the prophecies regarding the tribulations of the last days preceding the second coming of Jesus Christ, as well as Christ’s reign upon the earth during a thousand-year period (the “Millennium”), to be followed by a great war and the transformation of the earth itself. I also think that the Book of Mormon events recorded in Helaman and 3rd Nephi are an effective type and shadow of the last days (and that Mormon deliberately cast them as such).
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