I don’t typically read LDS Fiction. A lot of it just doesn’t appeal much to me. Those few books that do draw my attention are often either, in my estimation, much too preachy, superficial, and emotionally manipulative on the one hand or on the other veer off into apostasy in order to be edgy, artistic, intellectual, and morally nuanced. Blech.
However, contrary to my usual interests, last month I picked up a newly released book by David J. West entitled Heroes of the Fallen. I had run across West’s blog a few months earlier, and I had been following his posts. I knew that he was an aspiring LDS author, but I hadn’t followed his blog closely enough to realize that he had a book about to be published. When he announced it’s release, I was intrigued by what I had already gathered from his blog. So I headed over to the local bookstore where he was doing a book signing and purchased an author-signed copy. I finished Heroes of the Fallen in about a week.
The book is set in the ancient America of the Book of Mormon, around 320 or so years A.D. This setting is both a benefit and a challenge for the author. West benefits from a pre-existing setting, complete with unusual names and places, a history, language, political system, and religious beliefs. My favorite fantasy writers, like J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Lloyd Alexander, drew upon the histories, myths, and legends of the ancient civilizations with which they were familiar, borrowing names, plots, archetypes, and themes in order to lend weight and coherence to their works. In some ways, Heroes of the Fallen benefits similarly from the Book of Mormon. By adapting and extrapolating from the Book of Mormon, West is able to concentrate on filling in the details and bringing to life a fully-realized, exotic, ancient civilization without having to invent it whole-cloth.
This Easter weekend, April 3th and 4th, 2010, we’ve been enjoying the annual General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Every Conference I try to post links to MP3 audio of the sermons of the modern Apostles and Prophets of Jesus Christ as well as other Internet resources as they become available.
Also, try out the Beta of the church’s new General Conference page:
Back in October of 2009, Daniel Bartholomew and I announced our ScriptureLog project, an open source plugin that turns WordPress into a collaborative scripture study platform. At that time only we only had The Book of Mormon available.
Then in November, we released an update to add the Old Testament.
When we released the Book of Mormon, I had taken the time to develop a Book of Mormon outline, and I wanted to outline the Old Testament as well.
Today marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of “The Origin of the Species” by Charles Darwin. If you’ve followed this blog for a significant time you know that I have doubts about the compatibility of Darwinism and the belief in God as the Creator.
I remember as a high-school biology student, in addition to various other evolutionary facts, our teacher showed us the famous Heackel drawings of the developmental stages of embryos. He made us all memorize the phrase “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.” And he insisted that it was a scientific “fact” that proved that Darwin’s theory was undeniably true. It was all very convincing and I believed him. As a faithful member of the LDS church I reasoned that “evolution” was simply the device which God employed to bring to pass the creation. This was in 1989 and little did I know that the “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” hypothesis had, even then, been long discredited.
Before I get into the tedious specifics, let me get right to the main announcement.
Daniel Bartholomew and I are very excited to introduce you to ScriptureLog.
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ScriptureLog
Scripturelog is a free, open source plugin for the popular WordPress blogging platform that turns WordPress into a collaborative online LDS scripture study journal.
The plugin installs volumes of scripture into WordPress as hierarchical, inter-linking pages of books, chapters, and verses. Once the pages are installed, you can use the built-in features of WordPress by yourself or in collaboration with others to read the scriptures, take notes, and discuss the gospel.
As a child and a young man I owned a lot of pets. My poor mother, who is not a “pet person” at all, was more than a little patient with my ever expanding zoo, which overflowed from my bedroom into many other parts of the house and yard. A lot of my earliest spiritual experiences involved pets. I experienced the magic and excitement of new-born life and the sting and stillness of death in a very real, personal way.
My collection of life included a number of different birds. I had a parrot, cockatiels, budgerigars, zebra finches, canaries, a rooster and some hens, a bantam rooster and hens, ducks, homing pigeons, and ring-neck doves. I didn’t get an allowance and breeding pets, especially doves, and selling them to Utah Valley pet stores was my primary source of income.
Close personal contact with doves, especially in contrast to the other birds I had, gave me some insights into why the dove has been used as a symbol of peace, and in the scriptures as a sign for the Holy Spirit of God.
Parrots and parakeets have sharp, hooked bills and when they feel threatened or trapped they will squawk and screech, complain and murmur, and give you a painful bite– sometimes drawing blood.
This weekend, October 3rd and 4th 2009, we are participating once again in the semi-annual General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints where we listen to discourses by modern Apostles and Prophets of Jesus Christ. Every Conference I try to post links to MP3 audio and other Internet resources as they become available.
Read more »
We don’t belong to the “leave’m crying” nor the “sneak out when they aren’t paying attention” schools of parenting. As a result, I spend a lot of time in the nursery with my two-year-old during church on Sunday, even though I am not currently assigned to work in the nursery. A few years ago, when our older children were this age, my wife and I were called as the nursery leaders. My parents never did successfully get me to go to nursery as a child, but I have certainly made up for it as an adult.
When my grandfather passed away last year our family held a viewing at the local meetinghouse. Among the cousins, some of the young parents and their children ended up in the nursery room. As the kids played, one of the dolls caught my attention. The scowling face glared fiercely with a look much too mature for its little body. It was the ugliest doll I had ever seen! I wish that I had a picture of it.
Let’s face it, there are some bizarre and scary old toys out there, lurking in LDS nursery closets and cupboards.
One of my favorite definitions of logic comes from Ambrose Bierce’s satirical Devil’s Dictionary: “Logic: n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.”
History is a testament to the nearly limitless incapacity of the human misunderstanding. And while each generation reserves a regular chuckle for the naiveté of its ancestors, it is often just as blind to its own errors.
I believe that our minds are not only limited by lack of experience and information. They are fundamentally limited by mortality. Our two eyes can only extrapolate three dimensions, though with some effort we can conceive of a tesseract even if we cannot visualize it in its true form. We can only perceive colors of light within about 380 to 750 nanometer wavelengths, and as a result plants and flowers that exhibit intricate ultraviolet patterns and designs appear to us quite plain and ordinary to our limited vision. Technology allows us discover their patterns by translating the ultraviolet into our visible spectrum, but we are incapable of actually seeing them as they really are.
Reality is not circumscribed by your or my ability to comprehend, conceive of, or perceive it.
I don’t know if this is a temporary error or a permanent shift in policy, but the audio mp3 and video mp4 files of the Priesthood Sessions of General Conference are now available on the conference archive pages of the official church website:
Last fall I broke the news that the church was considering allowing members to watch the Priesthood Session live this year by using the planned LDS Account login functionality. The LDS Account system was finalized and released earlier this year and rolled out to a number of church websites.
Making the audio and video available after the Conference Report Ensign magazine has been publish may represent a new policy for Priesthood session media.
We’ll see if the church makes an official statement.
(Hat tip to reader David S for the tip)
Background: Member Driven Missionary Work
In the April 2009 General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Elder L. Tom Perry, who is one of the Twelve Apostles of the church, spoke about the responsibility of every member of the church to facilitate the missionary effort to teach the Restored Gospel. He urged us to step up “to do a job that is rightfully ours and for which we are better suited” than the missionaries. He urged us to open our mouths
to our friends and family. (Read the whole address: “Bring Souls Unto Me“, April 2009)
A few months prior to his conference address, Elder Perry presided over our stake conference. I had the opportunity to attend the priesthood leadership training meeting where he introduced us in more detail to the church’s vision for member driven missionary work and reactivation. Without creating any new manuals, establishing any new organizations , or requiring any additional meetings, he told us that the church intended to radically alter the work of building up the church through missionary work.
He then introduced us to a ward mission process by which wards and stakes will prayerfully identify teaching opportunities for the full-time missionaries. Lessons to both less active members and non members will be treated as equally important. Increasingly, members will be expected to drive the work forward by sharing the Gospel.
The church has known for many years that the most effective missionary system is driven by member referrals, but officially shifting the responsibility for finding new people to teach onto the stakes and wards, and holding them accountable for it, is an important, fundamental change.
My Revolutionary Proposal
Elder Perry’s words reminded me of an idea I had at the end of my own mission that dovetails perfectly with this new effort. Since his presentation I haven’t been able to get it off my mind. The more I think about it, the more I think that it needs to happen. Here it is:
Sacrament Meeting Invitations
Yes, I think that Sacrament Meeting Invitations could revolutionize the member missionary effort. Here’s how:
[Looking for the October 2009 Conference, go here]
This weekend, April 4th and 5th, 2009, is the annual General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints where the modern Apostles and Prophets of Jesus Christ will speak. Every Conference I post links to MP3 audio and other Internet resources as they become available.
For many months now I have been working on a project involving the Book of Mormon with Daniel Bartholomew, which we will be unveiling in the near future. As part of that project, I have compiled an outline of the textual structure of the Book of Mormon. I looked for an existing outline, but couldn’t find anything extensive enough for my needs. I am making it available here for anyone interested (as a PDF document):
I compiled the outline as a way to help me understand the Book of Mormon better by identifying some of the organizational boundaries, voices, and structure of the text.
In an interesting article published in the Christian Science Monitor, Michael Spencer argues that within the next 10 years there will be a major collapse of Evangelical Christianity. Spencer, who describes himself as a “postevangelical reformation Christian in search of a Jesus-shaped spirituality” says:
“Expect evangelicalism to look more like the pragmatic, therapeutic, church-growth oriented megachurches that have defined success. Emphasis will shift from doctrine to relevance, motivation, and personal success – resulting in churches further compromised and weakened in their ability to pass on the faith.”
…
“I believe the coming evangelical collapse will not result in a second reformation, though it may result in benefits for many churches and the beginnings of new churches.”
…
“We can rejoice that in the ruins, new forms of Christian vitality and ministry will be born. I expect to see a vital and growing house church movement. This cannot help but be good for an evangelicalism that has made buildings, numbers, and paid staff its drugs for half a century.”
“We need new evangelicalism that learns from the past and listens more carefully to what God says about being His people in the midst of a powerful, idolatrous culture.”
As the internet continues to transform the way we consume and even create entertainment, it is interesting to see how members of the LDS church are using the medium to create Mormon-specific entertainment distributed on the web.
As is usual with the web, not all of the content is worth promoting, or even consistently worth promoting.
In addition to blogging, we’ve seen the beginnings of a couple of LDS-oriented comic strips.
The 9th Ward is posted most Fridays by father-son team Rick and Ryan Goldsberry, who live in California, and features humorous vignettes related to Mormon culture.
Zarahemla Times is also posted Fridays by Kevin Beckstrom. It’s about a family living in the suburbs of Zarahemla in the time frame of about the end of Alma or Helaman in the Book of Mormon. Interesting in that it employs modern LDS terminology, such as the Relief Society, anarchronistically to an ancient setting.
So with blogging, podcasts, and now comics, we arrive at the next step in web-based LDS Entertainment: The Book of Jer3miah.
