By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog

I hate to admit this, but I’ve never been much of a fan of conference. These days I’ll usually catch the Sunday a.m. session, read the Bloggernacle commentary and then glance over the talks in the May/November Ensign, and that’s pretty much it. Read the rest of this entry »

Some of you may not know this about me, but I’m Canadian.

I know, I know.

If you go into the Church archives, behind the rows of computers are several short bookshelves filled with large three ring binders. Registers are tables of contents for document collections. The register for the Brigham Young collection maintains a significant footprint on these shelves. One entry is listed as the 1858-1863 Office Journal of President Brigham Young (marked “Book D”) and over it is stamped in red ink, “Confidential.” Today, I received a newly printed copy in the mail. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s the end of the month, must be time for home teaching. It’s been a while. Blame the hiatus on my move to Old Europe.

Hey, here’s a challenge: if you’re a bloke, be sure to go home teaching in October. Let’s have a BCC-sponsored HT-fest.

Anyway, on to the lesson. It’s inspired by James E. Faust’s September Ensign message, “The Father Who Cares.” Read the rest of this entry »

C.L. Bruno continues her guest stint here at BCC.

I am following Connor’s new project with much interest. As I surf around the Bloggernacle, I’m seeing little robotic icons with their right hands raised begging, “Sustain this!” Read the rest of this entry »

Jonathan’s post got me thinking about housework again.

My family has a heritage of domestic help. My great-grandmother had nannies, and servants. However, she loved to cook and was apparently very good at it. Her kitchen was equipped with a special sink with a cover, where she could put vegetable peelings and dirty dishes to await a servant who would come along after she was finished and clean up the mess. My grandmother had a cleaning lady and so did my Mom. In fact, I never really learned how to clean house while living in my parent’s home — I was only taught how to prepare for the cleaning lady to come. Things had to be removed off your dresser so the cleaning lady could dust, and under your bed had to be tidy so the cleaning lady could vacuum. This was not very demanding work. The cleaning lady seemed nice but quiet — she was from Yugoslavia and spoke a small amount of English.

I am breaking with my family tradition of having household help, and not simply because of budgetary constraints. Read the rest of this entry »

Martha Hughes Cannon (seen in image), is a wonderful and fascinating character in history. She was a doctor, educated at the University of Michigan. She was a State Senator (D), defeating her own husband who ran on the Republican ticket and became the first woman to hold such office in the United States. Perhaps most importantly to her, she was a mother. Read the rest of this entry »

…in which our hero undertakes a new quest, and great cataclysms arrive upon the land.

“Honey, you know what would be great? Reading the Marriage and Family Relations manual together. It could be fun!” Read the rest of this entry »

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, a stake ambitiously decided to mount a production of Handel’s Messiah. A large choir is assembled and practices for many months–the better part of a year. The director, a local member, has a Ph.D. in music, and tears his hair out trying to get the voices of the choir to bend to his will. Four soloists from among the singers are selected. Musicians are hired to play the brass parts and some of the strings that can’t be handled by local talent. A large number of people pour blood, sweat and tears into this event. As the performance approaches, many non-LDS are invited to attend, and many do. There is a full house. Read the rest of this entry »

In 1999 someone posed the following question to me:

This evening our family read the following verse in our family scripture study: “. . . the people of Nephi were exceedingly rejoiced, . . .” (Alma 45:1).

Even our young ones went, “Huh! What kind of English is that?”

So what’s up with that? Is it a typo? A printer’s error? An obscure usage of the verb “to rejoice”?

My (edited) response follows: Read the rest of this entry »

Romantics make poor intellectuals. Read the rest of this entry »

The name C.L. Bruno may not mean anything to you, but you’ve heard of her before. She’s smart and insightful and, well, bored. She’s guest posting with us for a couple of weeks. Welcome!

Last Sunday my daughter had her missionary farewell–oops, I mean, she gave a talk in her singles ward, along with another young man who was going on a mission. The two sang an arrangement of “A Marvelous Work.” The boy’s father, an accomplished musician, accompanied them on the piano. I, the proud mother, thought they did a fabulous job. Except, in the middle of the song, the piano stopped playing. At first, I and the rest of the congregation simply thought they were singing a cappella. Their voices blended wonderfully. But then the boy cast a glance at his father, and I realized the pianist was frantically searching for a missing page. He finally found his place, came in on the last page, and all had stayed on key. My daughter told me later she was shaking and clinging to the podium during the “a cappella” section. Read the rest of this entry »

Doctrinal ideas are like the exposed geology of Southern Utah. In the various strata of our history, movements of our people are veins of documentary sediment, some still being added upon. Some veins are followed to the Great Source, others end at a void or insignificance. Perhaps the greatest example of the latter is what I call Elder Brotherism. Read the rest of this entry »

Every Ward has their white shirt rebels. You know, the dodgy guy (like Rusty) who refuses to wear a white shirt. They are, however, outliers, freaks, rebels. But not in the Mormon colonies, it seems. Read the rest of this entry »

I asked a couple of friends, “how would you characterize the change in the blogs over the last 2 years, if any?”

One friend’s reply: “Boringer.”

Many of us are new — for kicks sometime, I recommend you scan through the archives (see the sidebar) or look at our old site. For those that have been around a while, how have things changed?

A frequent question from both member and critic alike asks what exactly is Mormon Doctrine. There are a lot of answers to this question, but the response that best reflects reality is one that reframes the original question. To respond coherently, we must ask what is the authorized doctrine of the Church. Read the rest of this entry »

Some of the more web-savvy of you may follow YouTube and already know the tale of lonelygirl15. For those who don’t, here are a couple of articles summarizing the internet scandal du jour, and for the extremely lazy, here’s an even more brief summary: some film people in NY made up a teenager and her online journals for YouTube, in the hopes of landing a film deal.

Sound familiar? Read the rest of this entry »

“So, how long are you going to be away for?”, he enquires.

“I think I’ll leave Thursday afternoon and come back Monday morning. I don’t want to be rushed.” I pull out the calendar. “Hmmm …. on second thought, maybe not.” I backpedal. Read the rest of this entry »

There has been a discussion recently on an e-mail list on which I participate about why it is that men (almost) always give the last talk in sacrament meeting. An answer that was proferred was so that the male priesthood holder would have an opportunity to correct any doctrinal error in the preceding talks. This is an explicit responsibility of the presiding authority, but is it necessarily the role of the concluding speaker? It doesn’t happen very often. I can think of one case where someone (a man, and also a priesthood holder) gave a perfectly fine talk on tithing and said that the Church does not define the basis on which one applies the 10%, whether it is gross, net or whatever. That is up to the individual to determine. The concluding speaker “corrected” the prior speaker, to the effect that tithing absolutely has to be on the gross–ironically getting it wrong himself. Read the rest of this entry »

I do my e-mail on Yahoo. Before they expanded the size of the mailboxes, my personal storage space was very limited, and so I rarely archived any of my old correspondence. But I did save the following question that was put to me back in 1998, and my response thereto: Read the rest of this entry »

There are certain things that one doesn’t bring up in correlated discourse. Like when the three Nephites visited uncle LeRoi (actually it was just two of them, but how embarrassing is it not to get the trifecta) or how the rock where you hide your key in the front yard is actually a Urim and Thumim. One of the great granddaddies of such conversation killers is reference to Masonry — the organization where our forefathers received their first lessons in dramatic ritual. Read the rest of this entry »