by Seattle Jon:
Another installment from Saintspeak, the mormon humor dictionary from Orson Scott Card. Previous installments can be found here. Reproduced with permission from Signature Books.
Sacrament The ordinance in which the child at the beginning of the row touches all the bread with his slobbery hands before finally taking a piece, the person who hands you the water tray tips it so it spills allover your lap, and the child in front of you keeps making a popping noise with her plastic cup throughout the rest of the meeting. People who can keep their thoughts holy during all that are invariably translated before the end of the meeting. Salt Lake City The center of the world.
Salvation Resurrection from the dead. Mormons regard it as a pretty ordinary gift, since it is automatically granted to everyone who ever lived, even Democrats.
Savage Misogynist To a Mormon feminist, this is an all-purpose term of abuse which can be applied to men whose sins range from thinking it is better to wait to give women the priesthood until after God has given his OK, to thinking that women should get the priesthood right after men are given the power to have babies and suckle their young.
Savages What Mormon pioneers called Lamanites who didn't cooperate.
Scripture To normal Mormons, anything that is divided into numbered verses and says "yea" and "behold" every now and then. To fervent believers, anything said by a General Authority. To fanatics, anything printed in Salt Lake City.
Seagulls A raucous scavenger bird with no sense of decorum, which is the state bird of Utah because of its habit of gorging itself, regurgitating and coming back to eat again.
Seer Stone Every Mormon child has heard about the urim and thummim, but almost no one is ever told about the seer stone, probably because the urim and thummim had more class. After all, great prophets had once owned the urim and thummim, while Joseph Smithjust picked up the seer stone from the ground one day and kept it in his hat. It looked for all the world like an ordinary rock, not at all impressive, so no doubt the seer stone was only used to translate the dull sections of the Book of Mormon.
Seminaries & Institutes The Mormon equivalent of medieval monasteries, manned by scholars who sacrifice all hope of wealth and dedicate their lives to discovering all the secrets of the universe so they can impart them to boys and girls who don't understand them anyway.
Seattle Jon is a family man, little league coach, urban farmer and businessman living in Seattle. He currently gets up early with the markets to trade bonds for a living. In his spare time he enjoys movies, thrifting and is an avid reader. He is a graduate of Brigham Young University and the Japan Fukuoka mission field. He has one wife, four kids and three chickens.Image credit: Signature Books (used with permission).
