Category Archives: books

another post about sex…

My friend Chris Bigelow and some of his buddies published an LDS humor column, “The Sugar Beet” (like The Onion for Mormons) for several years and have combined the best of their work into The Mormon Tabernacle Enquirer.

I’ve reprinted a bit of one of their funnier articles here, some positions from the Mormon Kama Sutra:

Retention and Reactivation
The Stripling Warrior
Urim and Thummim
The PPI
Hold to the Rod
The Secret Combination
Come, Thou Font of Every Blessing
Hie to Kolob
The Rameumptom

To this list I would add:
The Bishop’s Daughter
The RM

So I’ve been trying to come up with some similarly funny positions using Quaker terminology and I haven’t come up with much–perhaps I don’t know the lingo well enough yet. Perhaps ya’ll can chime in with some of your own ideas?

Bibliophilia


My book-loving friends:

I have a proposal for a pilgrim book group*, where we (meaning all of you interested pilgrimgirl readers out there) could select a text and have a book chat together. Similar to the Mindonfire book group, our discussion would include meetings online, in person, and via webcam.

I would like to propose that we begin our group with two readings from Ursula LeGuin:
1) her short story “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”
2) her novel The Dispossessed.

I chose these particular works because both grapple with utopian communities and the limitations of such.

Ok, so I know it wasn’t very democratic of me to choose the first readings myself, but I hope y’all won’t hold that against me. So please chime in if you’re interested in joining in the discussion and then we’ll make some more concrete plans for structuring our analysis of LeGuin’s stories.

*Thanks go to RyanH for being the catalyst for this group

Bible Study

As part of John’s Mind on Fire book group, I’m posting a brief summary/reaction to the Introduction of Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus

First of all, this Intro is a journey narrative so I feel particularly drawn to it. Ehrman recalls his changing faith in Christianity—from an apathetic Episcopal (his natal faith) to an evangelical Christian during his teen years. As his desire for a greater understanding of the New Testament brought him to Moody Bible College and later to Princeton Theological Seminary, he was plagued with the same, seemingly unanswerable, question:

“How does it help us to say that the Bible is inerrant the word of God if in fact we don’t have the words that God correctly inspired, but only the words copied by scribes—sometimes correctly but sometimes incorrectly?”(7).

His answer to this question is hinted at in the Intro, as we know that Ehrman no longer believes in the Bible as an infallible book, rather he believes that it is a human book, written to meet specific human needs. Thus, _Misquoting Jesus_ is his attempt to explain for a lay audience “how scribes were changing scripture and about how we can recognize where they did so.” That all sounds very interesting. But what I’m looking forward to is the answer(s) to why the scribes changed the Bible. In my mind, that is the more compelling question and I’m curious to see how Ehrman will tackle it.

for she who suffers

From a recent Women for Women flyer:

~80% of all refugees and displaced persons globally are women and children

~Rape is used as a tool of genocide and weapon of war: 20K Bosnian women raped during the Balkan War; 500K Rwandese women raped during the ’94 genocide; 100K+ of Congolese women raped in the DRC war

~70% of the world’s 1.3 billion poor are women

~90% of today’s war casualties are civilians, 75% of whom are women and children.

These are each shocking statistics. As I sit here reading through each one and trying to wrap my head around the suffering contained in these few lines I am completely humbled by my own good fortune, and at the same time I am ANGRY that this is my world, our world, in which this is happening.

On the advice of TanyaSue, last week I read Nectar in a Sieveand I thought a lot about the protagonist, Rukmani, and the vicissitudes of economic uncertainty in India that routinely left her and her children with only a handful of rice to eat each day. She watched family members die from malnutrition as she struggled to eke out a quiet life under intolerably harsh circumstances.

This book made me question: at what price do I enjoy this warm apartment that I sit in as I type on my laptop, pantry cupboards full, nearly every modern convenience at my fingertips. What right do I have to live in such privilege?

Awhile back I read of a young man about my age who decided to live as simply as possible, that he could give more of his money to those that suffer. He had only two sets of clothing. He slept on a mat on the floor with a thin blanket. He gave away all of his possessions except for those necessary in his nonprofit work.

What do you think? Are you tempted to abandon your comforts for the sake of another?

clothes. clothes. clothes…

Where do you draw the line between wearing clothes that are functional and comfortable, and those that might flatter your figure better or be more fashionable?

I picked up a copy of Adena Halpern’s Target Underwear and a Vera Wang Gown from the library yesterday, thinking that it might be an interesting rumination on the subject of clothes. Well, it was an interesting book if one wants to learn about the many designer outfits of the author, and how her well-heeled boyfriends have responded to her fashion choices. But not enlightening to me.

I’m sort of a fashion scrooge, I think.

Well, really, I love beautiful clothes. I enjoy looking through catalogs and fantasizing about owning cashmere sweaters, dresses of velvet and satin, or the perfect pair of butt-flattering jeans. And even though I do regularly spend money on clothes, I do so quite begrudgingly and with loads of guilt. The guilt doesn’t so much come from the money that I spend (although that can certainly be a factor). Rather the guilt comes from buying a commodity that, deep-down, I see as superficial, even worthless. Because I know that my body rarely needs new clothing. I have a closet and a chest of drawers full of items that I can wear for warmth and protection. So the guilt of from knowing that any clothing that I purchase is solely for my vanity. I do not NEED new clothes. So why do I keep buying them?

And I also know that clothing manufacturers routinely exploit women in developing countries, that many cloth fibers are grown in ways that pollute our environment, and that the modest amount of money I spend on clothes each month could easily support a family in Africa.

So, taking all of that into account, what’s a girl to do? Blow off fashion and continue wearing (and re-wearing) older clothes? Only buy from environmentally-responsible companies? Buy clothes with impunity, knowing that one’s choices are hardly a fraction of a drop in the bucket compared to worldwide consumption?

criticism

Yesterday I found myself in two different settings where the LDS Church was criticized.

The first was a graduate seminar. We were discussing Laurel Ulrich’s A Midwife’s Tale. Both the professor and several class members questioned Ulrich’s objectivity as a historian because of her Mormonism. There were critical comments about polygamy, patriarchy, and Mormon racism. Because of recent changes in my own religious identity, I found it difficult to speak up and defend the LDS Church. However, I did describe my unabashed admiration for Laurel and her work, but I didn’t address the critique of Mormonism.

Late yesterday evening I was at my AROOM book group when several of the women were bashing LDS patriarchy. For whatever reason, this really hurt my feelings. I wanted to tell those who were speaking to stop. But I didn’t. In hindsight I feel like I should have said something, but I’m not even sure what that something is/was.

Oddly, now that I’m out of the Mo church I find myself reluctant to criticize it. Not that I don’t see its faults, but I’m so happy to finally be able to let go of the anger I felt as a Mormon, that it’s hard for me to find myself in the midst of the criticism and not feel dragged down by it–as if it is disrupting my current joy.

obsessive-compulsive

A quiz from John:

What Kind of Reader Are You?

Your Result: Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm

You’re probably in the final stages of a Ph.D. or otherwise finding a way to make your living out of reading. You are one of the literati. Other people’s grammatical mistakes make you insane.
Dedicated Reader

Literate Good Citizen

Book Snob

Non-Reader

Fad Reader

What Kind of Reader Are You?
Create Your Own Quiz

So this description is only partially correct. Other people’s grammar mistakes don’t make me crazy. what makes me crazy is when my students don’t even bother to spellcheck their papers. Sheesh.

Make me smile…


-balancing on my right foot in yoga today. for quite awhile. feeling strong. then the good neck pull at the end of yoga. yvette’s hands cool and firm on my shoulders.
-a sushi lunch with John. a ‘healthy crunchy roll.’ my favorite. John & I musing about where we will be in 5 years, reveling in the many possibilities. recognizing that enjoying today is more important than knowing where we will be in the future.
-rain today. splashing through puddles after dropping the kiddoes at school this morning.
-a french vanilla candle burning in the kitchen.
-cracking open the spine of a promising-sounding history book. for discussion in my study group on friday.
-CatGirl wearing her “there are no ordinary cats” shirt.
-a package of tea arriving in the mail recently. starting my day with a cup of vanilla almond tea & toast with creamed honey. knowing that breakfast just doesn’t get any better than that.
-reading RJohn’s post about Regina Spektor and thinking about “taking that love you made and sticking it into someone else’s heart.” Connecting his thoughts to Elise’s powerful post about her deconversion from Mormonism and why, ultimately, love is what really matters. Listening to ‘Samson‘ and singing softly, “he told me that I’d done alright and kissed me till the morning light…” and contemplating the many haircuts that I’ve given to myJohn, “my sweetest downfall.”
🙂

the bestest friends

So today I had the delight of getting several lovely email messages: from old friends, from new friends, from cyberfriends, etc. Too cool. I received a poem, an invitation for a weekend gathering, a connection for yoga practice, an mp3 of a lecture that I missed last weekend, and had a meaningful interaction with more than one former acquaintance. Then I went to Institute tonite with longtime buddy Dora and hung out with more friends (friends who brought cookies, gave me the scoop on the latest Mo church happenings, and who are almost as passionate about blogging as I am). And then when I got home, I found this sweet book on my top step. Again, from friends.
Hmmm….I am so lucky. I have the bestest friends.

A Fowl Afternoon


.

Last week, Dora and I took CatGirl and GameBoy to hear author Eoin Colfer speak about his latest installment in the “Artemis Fowl” series. Colfer, speaking with his thick Irish brogue, captured the attention of about 75 kids for a nearly hour-long booktalk and had a booksigning line that stretched 3 blocks long (ah, but we were 3rd in line, lucky us!!).

Thanks go to Dora for remembering her camera and taking this lovely photo. 🙂