The Mormon blog sphere (I’ve decided there’s no real “Bloggernacle” anymore, it’s too divided and Balkanized to have such a unifying name anymore) has been abuzz about the recent changes at BYU for the religious class requirements. Generally, the consensus has been that this is a bad thing – even those not totally shocked have only offered a very qualified “wait and see” approach.
I, however, think the changes are (probably, likely) a good thing.
For those who came in late: Continue reading
On November 18th, 2014, President Henry B. Eyring of the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will be addressing a global meeting of faith leaders hosted by the Catholic Church at the Vatican. The meeting, called a “colloquium” will be opened by Pope Francis and is meant to bring world religious leaders together in support of the traditional, male-female definition of marriage. Continue reading
As today is fast sunday, I wasn’t in a hurry to rush home when services let out this afternoon. So on a whim, I drove my car to the nearby cemetery where family members rest in peace.
It was a gorgeous fall day, bright and brisk. For me this cemetery is a place of happiness, a location we used to visit frequently as children, chasing the geese around the green lawns or feeding the black swan that lived near the central pond. My baby sister had been interred there in the late sixties, and so visiting the cemetery was something my mother did rather frequently.
In the nineties I had a child diagnosed in utero with a severe heart defect. Given the high probability of death, it was natural to contact this same cemetery to be the resting place for my son’s remains, were he to pass. After the brief, hopeful week following his birth, his heart gave out. So we laid him to rest in the same area where my sister was buried decades earlier, a heart-shaped corner of the cemetery known as BabyLand. Continue reading