Mini Cemeteries

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by Scott Heffernan (bio)

This is a photography project I started working on last spring. The idea was to take pictures at various cemeteries in Seattle and use a tilt-shift effect to make them appear like a miniature model. I lost steam part way through the project and never finished, but I thought I would share a few anyway. You can buy them here.

Smashing Magazine's 50 Beautiful Examples Of Tilt-Shift Photography: here

Comparative Reality

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by Aimee (bio)

Self Acceptance.

Amen.

found via stuffnoonetoldme blog. 

I also like this one and this one and this one too.

Droppin' Sh** Bombs in the Cultural Hall

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by Luke Warmer (bio)

Pop! A week ago today, I came down from a routine jumpshot and collapsed on the cultural hall floor and cussed a mighty and bellowing cuss - the injury seemed to have momentarily deactivated my usually adroit cuss-censor. (A moment later the missionaries came out of the adjoining Relief Society room with well-trained stink-eyes and investigators in tow. Blush.)

Goodbye un-ruptured Achilles Tendon, you will be missed.

I'm thirty-three and work a desk job, but the moment I step on a court I forget all about my sedentary reality. In my head I become seventeen. My body disagrees with my head on this age issue. So my body - always the resolute arguer - settles things by completely rupturing my largest tendon. (C'mon body; we both know there were plenty of ways you could have proven your point without sending me to the DMV for a handicap parking tag.)

Like most Momos I've been having dramatic debates between my mind and body since... oh let's see... about the onset of puberty. It's probably safe to assume that my body was still angry about losing one-too-many of those hormonal arguments during my teenage years and was waiting in the wings for a chance to win a debate in melo-dramatic fashion.

Thus begin the chronicles of our hero, (referring to myself in the third person for dramatic effect) hobbling around on crutches and gearing up for a year of grueling rehab.

Has anyone else got wrecked in church-activities? Did your cuss-censors hold-up, or were they glitchy like mine? What is the most awkward place you've experienced cuss-censor failure (think Ralphy in A Christmas Story)?

image via gobarefooting.wordpress.com

My Talk for General Conference

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by Bishop Higgins (bio)

In April 2006, Gerald Higgins was called as bishop and began documenting his experiences and even revealing some ward inside information. The blog was so popular that when he was released, in February 2010, most of his congregation started sinning again, consisting mostly of petulance, pride, and the worship of graven images. As a result, Gerald was recently reinstated as bishop and in addition to taking up blogging again here, will also occasionally write for Modern Mormon Men. Also, he just looked up the word petulance.

*****

I didn't speak in General Conference this year, but that hasn't stopped me from preparing a talk, just in case things change between now and October.

My talk is on the importance of husbands allowing their wives to get as many pillows for the bed as they want. In my experience, there is a direct correlation between the happiness in marriage and the quantity of bed pillows therein. Some of the happiest couples I know have a bedroom that would be mistaken for a pillow museum or pillow show-room.

I'm not going to say how many pillows a couple should have. That is to be left up to the individual couple and can only be decided after much fasting and prayer. And don't let anyone tell you how many you should have. Except eight is a baseline. At least get eight. But then, after that, don't let anyone tell you how many more you should have.

The pillows don't all need to be full size. Some of them can be cute, small, decorative pillows. In fact, some of them will need to be if you're going to get 20 or 30 pillows on that bed. And I don't need to tell you this, but some of those little Chinese pillows are so adorable.

Should you go in debt to buy a bigger bed in order to accommodate the amount of pillows needed to secure a happy marriage? Quite simply, yes.

And that's what I'd talk about in conference.

When CTR Gets Complicated

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by MAB (bio)

I recently finished a New York Times bestseller “Justice, What is the Right Thing To Do?” a book by Michael J. Sandel, Professor of Government at Harvard University. My wife saw it at the library and checked it out thinking one of us might have the time to read it. I saw that it covered some aspects of philosophy, which is a recent and probably short-term interest of mine, so I dug right in. It’s brief at approximately 275 pages but it took me about a month to read because I continued to read other books and also started to learn Dutch. I add those details to help provide context to this post, the context being that I didn’t pay too close attention to what I was reading. You now have every right to roll your eyes, but before you move on to something else let me say that the book was quite interesting and I’m certain I can pull some concepts out that will make this worth your while.

In the beginning Sandel gently exposes the reader to basic philosophy and poses some of the classic conundrums for consideration. In the rest of the book he does two important things: first he gives the reader a framework of philosophical perspectives upon which modern day moral questions can be considered, then he analyzes current moral debates through one or all of the perspectives.

The first perspective is Utilitarianism (Bentham), which states that to determine the right thing to do you calculate how to achieve the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people. This however could lead to the unfortunate hypothetical situation where one person in a city is tortured for no other reason than to make everyone else happy. Which leads us to the next perspective.

What does Arcade Fire have to do with Modern Mormon Men?

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by Scott Heffernan (bio)

Well not much really...except...

1) One of the founding members of this blog is a huge Arcade Fire fan (me).

2) Lead singer, Win Butler, has some Mormon roots. During an interview with NPR, he relates, "I went to church a bit. My mom's side of the family is religious and my dad's side isn't. My mom's side are Mormon, but they're all musicians, so kind of like, martini drinking Mormons." I bet they would be fun to hang out with.

3) There is a song on Arcade Fire's latest album, The Suburbs, called "Modern Man." (This had nothing to do with the naming of this blog.) The lyrics of the song are not terribly optimistic. The song paints a picture of the Modern Man purposelessly taking a number, waiting in line, and going nowhere. Redundant, waiting to die, with a vague and fleeting awareness of broken aspirations. The lyrics illustrate the existential crisis that the Modern Man is faced with, realizing his life has no meaning or value.






I can definitely relate to the angst described in the song. I don't believe Mormons are immune to the existential crisis. Is this portrayal of the Modern Man accurate? I hope this blog can help contribute to a redefinition of the Modern (Mormon) Man. Not only in regard to the human condition, but more so in exploring today's perceptions of masculinity, family, culture, love, and orthodoxy. I hope we can "break the mirror of the Modern Man."

Growing Pains: On Progression, Staying Childlike and Being Responsible

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by brettmerritt (bio)

"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." - 1 Corinthians 13:11

For most of us there are a handful of moments in life that shape us, scar us, teach us, scare us and force us to move on. These moments end up shaping who we are, either for better or worse, but we move on as life does its thing.

For others, it’s not that easy. Some get stuck. This happens when a person decides (consciously or sub-consciously) not to move past something: a bad break-up, a horrible loss, a divorce, an addiction or an instance of abuse. These can all be reasons someone remains mentally in one time period while physically aging and moving through their life. It’s heartbreaking how their past can haunt them. What can be more heartbreaking is how being so focused on the past can lead to losing faith. Often they can’t stop thinking about themselves long enough to imagine something bigger than them exists and is ready to help them if they ask.

There is an opposite to this too. There are people who aren't mentally stuck on the bad that happened but, rather, seem to focus only on how good they had it when they were a kid or teenager. They want life to stay like it was forever. They refuse to work, don't like having a job, joke all the time, care too much about what people think and generally think the best time of their life was from the age of twelve to nineteen. I think we've been around that person who’s a kid in a thirty-something's body. "But they are so fun and carefree! I would love to have some of that back," you might say. Well, of course we admire it. We remember how it was too. But retaining a fun sense of life and always being a kid are two different things.

So, between these two traits, we have people who can’t move beyond their past and people who relish reliving it while putting off the present. Admittedly, I have experienced versions of both of these traits.