This is a talk I gave at Church.  I had a blast.

The Book of Mormon is for our times.  We all know about the Great and Spacious Building that Lehi saw.  It was towering up in the air and full of people with fancy clothes pointing and laughing and it had no foundation.  It made lots of people lose their way because they were ashamed or wanted to get to it.

The Book of Mormon is for our times.  It means that in our times we have to worry about bullying and mocking from prominent people, about trying to be high status, and fashions.  So let’s talk about that. (more…)

[This started as a comment on Vader’s post below, but I decided to make it a post instead.]

Perhaps this is stating the obvious, but the number of LDS participants in scouting is going to crater. The ones who didn’t really like scouts will be gone, obviously, but even those who enjoyed it will find it hard to squeeze in around whatever program the Church rolls out to replace scouting. School activities were already encroaching on youth night; how many boys are going to do Scouts and Mutual together? A few of the multi-generation Eagle Scout families will soldier on, of course.

Now, theoretically, the Church *could* do everything scouts did, just on its own. But as much as I’d love to see “The Nauvoo Legionnaires” come to fruition, I don’t expect that.

An optimist would say that the Church is free to take what it likes from Scouting and focus on that while leaving the rest behind. In reality, it rarely works so neatly. The BSA is (or was) a living, coherent thing. It is not obvious which aspects of it could be done away with without killing it. I’m reminded of Joseph Bottum’s essay in First Things, “When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano: Catholic Culture in America”: (more…)

13 years ago my little daughter died of cancer. This is what I wrote on her birthday that year, with slight updates since. Today would be Betsey’s 17th birthday.

My wife baked her a cake.  I bought a few balloons and ordered flowers for her grave.

Happy Birthday, Betsey Pearl.

Today our grief for you is fresh.

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