Underlined: Halfway Through The New Karl Maeser Biography

Tweet

by Bradly Baird:

I am just about halfway through the new biography of Karl Maeser by A. LeGrand Richards (Professor of Educational Leadership and Foundations at Brigham Young University). Reading the book has been such an unexpected delight and such a rewarding experience that I cannot wait until I am finished to share some of its riches. Enjoy!

A selection of One-line Aphorisms
"Be yourself, but always be your better self."

"Make the man within you your living ideal."

"Man grows with his higher aims."

"Nature is the best educator."

"School is a drill for the battle of life; if you fail at the drill you will fail in the battle."

"Everyone of you, sooner or later, must stand at the fork of the road, and choose between personal interests and some principle of right."

21 Lessons from a Lesson on David and Bathsheba

Tweet

by Shawn Tucker:

So I was asked to substitute for Sunday School, and the lesson dealt with David and Bathsheba. (For a slightly amusing take on this challenge, see here.) Here are 21 lessons I learned from preparing the lesson:

1. When David saw Bathsheba in the bath, she was performing a ritual washing or Mikveh. She was not just chillin' in the tub after a long day. In fact, the verses tell us she was doing this because she had just finished her period.
2. Jerusalem is on a hill, so David could have looked out from the roof and seen Bathsheba.
3. There is nothing, NOTHING!, in the scriptures to suggest that Bathsheba had put herself on display, wanted to be seen by anyone (including David), or was doing anything but performing a ceremonial washing. In fact, the verses mention her bath and her period to drive home the point that Bathsheba's child was David's and could not have been Uriah's.
4. David saw a beautiful woman performing a ceremonial washing, became sexually aroused, had his men take her, and then had non-consensual sex with her.
5. The sex between them is non-consensual because David had all of the power, had compelled her to come to him, and someone in Bathsheba's position is not completely free to say yes or no to sex. What David did was beyond adultery; it was rape.

Strange Church Encounters: MMM Edition

Tweet

by Eliana:

The following are true tales, without embellishment.

The Primary president was doing sharing time one Sunday soon after my first calling to teach in Primary. The topic was Word of Wisdom; kids had to choose a picture and put it on the bulletin board on the good or bad side. Cigarettes, bad, apples, good. Then there was a picture of macaroni and cheese. The child put it on the good side—no evil here. But wait, President disagrees. Macaroni and cheese is a processed food. We shouldn't eat it all the time. It isn't good for our bodies. So she moves it to the bad side. I bite my tongue, nearly drawing blood. This is officially the most confusing Word of Wisdom lesson for kids under eight ever. I'm confused even. I clearly need to ask more questions about what my kids are learning each Sunday while they’re away from me.

*****

Our whole stake is reorganized so we are in a different ward after a dozen years in the same one. I show up at the building on a week night to get my temple recommend renewed. There's a guy hanging around the bishop's office who I see every week but don't know, so I put on my friendly face.

"Hi, I'm Eliana Osborn. I don't think we've met yet."

"I'm Brother X."

Prophet Playing Cards: Snow & F. Smith

Tweet

by Seattle Jon:

Some of my fondest childhood memories are of collecting sports cards and memorabilia with my dad. This series is an attempt to try and recapture some of those feelings by making my own prophet playing cards.

Prophet Playing Cards: Smith & Young | Taylor & Woodruff

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.

Saintspeak 22: The Letter S, Part 1

Tweet

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.

Why Can't I Get It Right?

Tweet

by Bradly Baird:

I cannot seem to get my career right. Why?

Every job that I have had since I finished my undergraduate work in 1990s has been an unhappy experience. I worked hard at these jobs, accomplished many things, and still felt at the end of the day as though I wasted my time or just felt empty about the work that I completed (zero satisfaction by any of it). I am now in that same position with my current employer. I come home at the end of everyday completely exhausted - feeling as though I am just making money for someone else - and I am at the end of my rope.

All of my friends and acquaintances from college have found stable careers and seem to derive at least a little bit of satisfaction from their work; many even seem to enjoy it. So, what is my problem? Where does my inability to find this satisfaction come from? I am unable to answer either of these questions and now I am thinking that perhaps I need some sort of therapy.

I maintain an incredibly fulfilling religious and spiritual life, enjoy a fulfilling life at home with my family, and experience hobbies and interests that endlessly fascinate and interest me (not to mention the fun of writing every month for Trip M). If I can get the personal aspects correct and feel a tremendous sense of peace and joy therein, where am I getting it wrong with the professional? I just don't know.

I thought last week that I might not be cut out for the regular business life and started looking around at homesteads in Utah that I might purchase and try to become self-sufficient (like those nutzos on the "reality" show, Alaska: The Final Frontier). But, after a few minutes I came to my senses and realized that I couldn't do something like that to my family.

So, blogosphere, I put it to you. How do I figure out this professional stuff? I am open to any sort of advice from anyone out there (especially if some of you might have a particular expertise in this field). You can put a comment on this post or, if you have something deeper to say, send me an email. I am open to any ideas and thoughts because everything I have attempted thus far has failed.


Bradly Allen Baird is the father of two amazing children and has been married for almost twenty years. He served a mission in Finland, though he was really supposed to serve in Uruguay. His professional meanderings include everything from education to economic development, to human capital management in the IT industry (hopefully this one sticks); and spends his Saturdays hanging out with the missionaries in Provo, or racing back and forth between his children's activities in tae kwon do and elite cheerleading. Bradly also survived an MBA program; developed a somewhat limited interest in music, theater, film, urban planning, judaica, liberation theology, politics, israel, and latin american history; studies the influence of graphic imagery on public space; wrote a thesis about Leonard Bernstein, is obsessed with the American Symphonists, and reads publications like The Tablet and the Jewish Daily Forward.
Image credit: James Yeung.

I Still Believe

Tweet

by Eliana:

We visited my aunt a few weekends ago and one of her kids, my cousin, is living there with his kids for now. First question after not seeing each other in a year? "Are you still Mormon?"

I email a friend from high school for tips about visiting Hong Kong, remembering that he served his mission there. "If you are still Mormon, a lot of people like to see the LDS temple there," he replies.

I am an active member of the church, a temple recommend holder, mostly every Sunday kind of gal. I keep getting questions from people in my life about my current religious state of being. The first few times I brushed it aside has a reasonable catch up question, but it keeps happening so I'm thinking about it a bit more deeply.

• I wrote about my general sense of God last year for MMM
  
• I don't talk about my faith on Facebook or pretty much anywhere. It is close to my heart and not something I feel casual about. I feel guilty about this, especially with all the emphasis on sharing the gospel.
  
• I feel like I exemplify a Christian life through my actions and life choices. Is that not clear to those around me? Is there something I am doing or saying that leads others to think I am no longer a practicing Mormon?
  
• Many of my friends and associates have left the church, for a variety of reasons. I think I have been less obnoxious about it than most so these people feel comfortable talking to me, which may explain some of the questions I get. Am I a magnet for the disaffected?

I try not to be offended when asked about being a saint, except that it makes me doubt myself a bit. From some, the assumption is that I am 'edgy,' I have just two children, I work in academia, any number of signs that they don't think match up with being LDS.