Our esteemed JG co-blogger John Mansfield has a theory that Mormons are retreating socially into their extended families, and worries that the Church is turning into something like a confederation of clans (have I got it right, JM?). He goes so far as to posit that the custom of cousin marriage might make inroads in a more insular Church.

I don’t really see the trend of extended families becoming more important than other Church associations, possibly because I live in a far-off land where most Mormons are transplants without extended family around. But I do observe a trend that might be related. (more…)

Overheard from a missionary:

Our families are worth the world to us.
We are worth the world to God.

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You know the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes.  It ends this way:

“But he hasn’t got anything on,” a little child said.

“Did you ever hear such innocent prattle?” said its father. And one person whispered to another what the child had said, “He hasn’t anything on. A child says he hasn’t anything on.”

“But he hasn’t got anything on!” the whole town cried out at last.

The Emperor shivered, for he suspected they were right. But he thought, “This procession has got to go on.” So he walked more proudly than ever, as his noblemen held high the train that wasn’t there at all.

Now you will know the rest of the story: (more…)

On Thursday Ken Mattingly, the youngest man among those who ever ventured beyond low Earth orbit, turned 80. A couple others were younger than Admiral Mattingly at the time of their respective launches, but Mattingly’s mission, the next-to-last Apollo mission to the moon, was later than theirs, and he was born last. As Apollo 16’s Command Module Pilot 44 years ago, he is one of seven men to have ever been isolated by a couple thousand miles from any other person, three days orbiting the moon alone.

To repeat, the couple dozen men who have ever seen Earth from a thousand miles away are all 80 years old or older or dead, and they all did so on their way to the moon. Another decade or so left till such feats become legend.

From the Washington Post:

Leona Barnes doesn’t remember when, back around the close of World War I, she met Gladys Butler, Ruth Hammett and Bernice Underwood. Growing up in Southwest Washington, they were part of the landscape, in the same way that her house and her street and her church were.

As little girls, the four played jacks and jumped rope; later they shared gossip and danced the two-step and the Charleston. Two of them lived in the same house at one point, and three of them had babies the same year — 1933. But they could not have predicted that someday they would be poised to celebrate their 100th birthdays together.

“We all are grateful, and we thank the Lord for all of us to see 99,” Barnes said as she sat this week in Zion Baptist Church in Northwest Washington with the other three, who are members there. Slapping her thigh for emphasis, she said, “If we don’t make 100, it’s up to Him — but we made the 99.”

Knowledge is a form of love.  Knowledge without love is like sex without love. (more…)

Political science professor Benjamin Knoll has put together an analysis of suicides among those 15-19 years old as correlated with the Mormon percentage of states’ populations. (link) There are elements of his analysis that are odd and unhelpful for understanding anything, but the one big fact at the heart of his data is interesting to me. The suicide rate for this age group in Utah is double what it was five years ago. (more…)

Now, repentance could not come unto men except there were a punishment, which also was eternal.

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glennterryart.com

Adam and Eve were created from the dust, the scriptures tell us. We haven’t escaped that lowly origin. Dust is where we come from, dust is who we are, and dust is where we are headed. (more…)