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Don't judge

Until I was eight or nine, the only thing I remember ever listening to on the radio was classical music or church songs, mostly the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. I was completely ignorant of the world of music outside of this narrow selection, and that ignorance made me judgmental. On one occasion that I remember particularly well, my parents were gone and had left us with my older cousin Serena, who is such an amazing person, by the way. Anyway, we were in the old ten-seater blue van and she did the unthinkable - she changed the radio station . I was appalled. To think, my own cousin would leave the safety and security of Handel and hymns to fling herself off the cliff of some devilish "pop" music! To make matters worse, she started moving to the groove  with a complicated combination of claps, snaps, knee taps and lap pats. I looked around me to see the reaction of my siblings, only to find that they were moving to the groove, too!!  So there I was, confronted with a real-life m

A time for peace...and a time for WAR!!!

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"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God" (Matt 5:9)   I hope you enjoyed the video. True story, by the way. Sometimes I think I should be more like my second-grade self. Wasn't I such a doll? I was cute, too. See, I'll prove to you. Look here-- Check me ouuuuuut. That's me in the middle, in case you weren't sure. That's Josh on my right, the best Dragon Ball Z gamer in our grade, and Nate on my left, who was good friends with Sarek (the one who punched me in the face). Man, I look good. Even without my gorgeous curly locks that now flaunt my dome, I was quite a hunk, dontcha think? Sorry for getting distracted. (Come on, don't pretend you don't like mini-me.) Anyway, I was a cute, innocent little kid, right, and I had peace emblazoned on my soul. Fighting was a big NO-NO in my house growing up, so I assumed it was bad everywhere. My family read scriptures every morning, and Jesus said &q

This is not marital advice

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If you're married, about to get married, or the thought of getting married has ever occurred to you, people will tell you things like, "Yo  home-dog, I'm just lettin you know, your baby gurl ain't always gonna take your side " or  "L isten sister, there will be times when you and your sweetie disagree, so beware" or " Now son, the occasion will arise from time to time when you two don't see eye-to-eye."   I don't know what it is, but  e veryone is obsessed with this idea. They can't let you go into marriage thinking you're never going to have conflict with your spouse--they couldn't live with themselves if they didn't warn you about it. Familylife.com  says, "There  is no way to avoid  conflict  in your  marriage." Wow. That's awesome. And motivating. There is no way; conflict is unavoidable. Without offering detailed examples, I would say that there probably  are  ways to reduce conflict, and we

Mornings

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I've been robbed. Someone out there, someone who’s totally miserable, has it out for me. And I know exactly who it is. Do you believe in little people? I do. They get up in the middle of the night and use some kind of thieving contraption to sap all my energy so when I wake up, I’m pooped--completely divested of my vivacity. All that’s left is a semi-liquid-like slop, which, upon hearing the alarm, clumsily spills out of bed onto the floor into a puddle of exhaustion.   I have attempted staying up all night, waiting for them to show up so I can laugh in their puny, little faces while I squish them, but they're too small to see so my efforts to stop them fail every time. I get out of bed in the morning only to find that they've made off with my energy yet again! It is MOST disconcerting, and I only hope I can find a way to exterminate these pests entirely, though I am surviving.  Things used to be worse, you know. If it weren't for some things I learned, they pr

Beyond the bounds of time

Amulek describes the atonement as " an  infinite  and  eternal   sacrifice" ( Alma 34:10). Nephi adds that it is "infinite for all mankind " (2 Nephi 25:16; emphasis added). Let's not get too theoretical here, but I think we will agree - and you mathematicians know well - that there are multiple levels of infinity. The level or kind of infinity that really caught my attention this week was mentioned in a segment written by Tad R. Callister on the BYU Religious Study Center's website under "Teaching the atonement." He writes that the atonement is "Infinite in time, both prospectively and retroactively," meaning that it redeems all mankind who lived before it was performed and all those who would live after it was performed. My question is, how could the atonement redeem all the people who lived before it even happened?  To back up Elder Callister, I'll share two scriptures. First, Jarom 1:11 said that the prophets taught the people

Don't be that guy: the worst tools in history

Have you ever met anyone who just thought they were the greatest thing since sliced bread? Let's be honest, the best place to find those people is the high school weight room. Okay, yeah, that was an over-generalization, but no, I'm not talking about the typical football-playing meatheads that we all know and love, I mean a real, king-size, full-blown tool, somebody who thinks they're greater than God Himself. Ever met somebody like that? Whether you have or not, this post is for you. ;) There are several such egomaniacs found within the pages of holy writ, one of which I encountered recently in  Alma 9:6 , who asks the following question: "...Who is God, that sendeth no more authority than one man among this people, to declare unto them the truth of such great and marvelous things?" Though the verse says "they" said this, I imagine some individual was the first to voice those words, for which reason I'm going to refer to said individual as "

So you wanna be the boss

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While exploring the wild recesses of YouTube this afternoon, I found myself funkily entranced by a 1982 Oliver Cheatham song called, "Everybody Wants To Be The Boss." Though written more than three decades ago, the song still seems to reflect contemporary society - we all wanna be top dog. Everyone seems to be gunning for president, CEO, supervisor - the list goes on. But what does it mean to be the boss? What are the responsibilities of being a leader? As it turns out, Ammon, a character in the Book of Mormon, is the one who answered this question for me. In the passage I was reading, Ammon and his homies were about to split up to go to different Lamanite cities to preach the word of God. It began with, " Now Ammon being the chief among them, or rather he did administer unto them" ( Alma 17:18 ). So Ammon was head honcho, and he "administered" unto them? Sounds to me like administration, like some kind of business venue. A dab peculiar for the BCs, if y