By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog

Part 5 of 5. 

Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4.

 Deaths and (Re)births Part 5: The Ascent

In the end, time–which had colluded with the physical world in our slow march toward death–also eventually served as an invaluable ally, and we slowly and gradually climbed out of the deep hole into which we had been buried. No dramatic rescue, no earth-shattering event on an epic scale. A series of small, grace-filled events helped keep us afloat. We were blessed to eventually move into a much larger and newer apartment. My Logic professor unexpectedly, at the last moment, decided to change the format of the class final to a written essay (which I easily produced) instead of a series of symbolic logic proofs (which I would have failed). The twins eventually graduated from their heart monitors and oxygen lines and we began to take them out after many months, first on walks, then to restaurants and malls. Gradually, we began to sleep again. Though it seemed an eternity at the time, the agonizingly slow but steady return to semi-functionality (of which I’ve been able to relate only the hundredth part) had lasted about 2 years. Read the rest of this entry »

Part 4 of 5.

Part 1 here. Part 2 here. Part 3 here. 

Deaths and (Re)births Part 4: The Reckoning

At some point, stumbling around in the darkness, I had stopped even attempting to do homework. Some of my classes didn’t make attendance part of the final grade; I stopped attending these classes altogether. I initially told some of my professors about our plight but received no quarter. My Logic professor responded curtly, “Huh. My son and his wife had triplets.” Despite the round the clock assistance his son’s family was receiving from his extended family and his ward, having triplets was apparently much harder under any circumstances, so I had nothing to complain about.

Read the rest of this entry »

Part 3 of 5. 

Part 1 here. Part 2 here. 

Deaths and (Re)births Part 3: The Landing

I was not going to graduate.

I was nearing the end of my final semester at BYU, approximately 14 or 15 months after the twins’ birth. Predicate logic. It was predicate logic that was finally going to close the lid on my academic coffin. To this point I had been able to skate by in my other classes; a “B” in a relatively easy Marriage and Family course, a “C” in a more difficult philosophy class; even a “D+” in Personal Finance, which I almost never attended—I probably should have failed that course outright. But Predicate Logic was a required course for my chosen Major, Philosophy, and you couldn’t get anything lower than a “C” for a Major class. Once you dropped below a “C” you would have to retake the class. I was well below a “C,” and scheduled to graduate the following month. If I didn’t produce that “C” I would not graduate. Read the rest of this entry »

Part 2 of 5. First part here.

 Deaths and (Re)births Part 2: The Fall

“Well, I have good news for the two of you. First, it’s a boy. Second—he has a sister.”

All it took was one perfectly timed and perfectly worded sentence from our ultrasound technician to cause my appetite to disappear completely for 48 hours. Twins. It was unimaginable. During that period I experienced varying waves of total euphoria and mind-numbing fear. Admittedly, it was mostly euphoria. The bragging rights were, after all, unparalleled. Not only naturally conceived twins on our first excursion into replenishing the earth, but opposite sex twins as well. Apollo and Artemis, just like that.

Surely, we were gods. Read the rest of this entry »

About a year ago I read Kathryn Lynard Soper’s The Year My Son and I Were Born: A Story of Down Syndrome, Motherhood, and Self-Discovery. The book is one of those precious cerebral volumes whose penetrating insights do so much more than simply relate and describe their subject matter accurately. Instead, they engage in a new retelling of the central human drama of birth, death, and rebirth. (A BCC review of the book by Steve P. is here).*  Indeed, human life can be perceived phenomenologically as a series of births, deaths, and rebirths, in which the thick, palpable materiality of some of our experiences destroy us, but then resurrect us to live again as beings who have undergone a metamorphosis. Inspired by Kathryn’s memoir to tell my own story of death and rebirth–how I found myself inserted into the Great Human Story–I’ve (crudely and clumsily) written an essay about one transformative and worldview-altering experience in my life, divided into 5 heart-on-my-sleeve parts. The first part is below. I’ll likely publish the parts each day over the course of the next week or so.  Read the rest of this entry »

We were late once again to Sacrament Meeting this past Sunday. The usual hangups of getting 4 children 8 and younger  (including 1 grumpy, teething 15 month old) fed and ready for church. Like every other Sunday we were cursing ourselves for not beginning the process earlier, but also like every other Sunday the process included unanticipated surprises like having to change a messy diaper at the last moment, forgetting until we were nearly out the door a key component of the “care package” we take every Sunday to distract our children at least long enough to take the sacrament. It’s always something. Every Sunday. And like every other Sunday for the past several months I was struggling to scrape together enough desire to go in the first place. Our youngest was enough of a handful at this point that any sort of meaningful experience on any level was going to be unlikely. I had probably squeezed every drop of meaningfulness out of being a Hall Wanderer I could, but since neither of us had callings, we could devote all of our time to developing a method of reading scripture while chasing a baby around the building. “Scripture Chase,” I would call it. It has a certain ring to it….. Read the rest of this entry »

Livestream Feed Here.  Conference begins at 8:30 a.m., MDT.

Liveblogging in the comments below.

(Also, Kristine has declared that she will sing part of her presentation, followed by an interpretive dance that translates homemaking into performance art . Stay tuned for that). Read the rest of this entry »

Mormonism and the Internet Livestream Feed

Schedule of events here.

List of participants here.

Readings and Resources here.

The conference kicks off today at 8:30 a.m. MDT

Liveblogging in the comments below.

Schedule of Events

Wednesday, March 28th in SC 213a
12:00-1:00 p.m. ~ Author Readings (sponsored by the UVU English Department)
Joanna Brooks
Jana Reiss
Read the rest of this entry »

Title: An Experiment on the Word: Reading Alma 32
Editor: Adam S. Miller
Publisher: Salt Press
Genre: Religion/Philosophy
Year: 2011
Pages: 98
Binding: Paperback
ISBN13: 978-0983963608
Price: $12.95

One particular question within the realm of Mormon studies that has stubbornly persisted for the last several years is the question of how theology is “done” in Mormonism. In other words, how does Mormon theological discourse proceed? How should it proceed? How do Mormons talk about their theology, and is this same as how Mormons should go about their theology? In lived Mormonism, because of the emphasis on how Mormonism is or should be practiced or experienced (instead of how it is or should be thought), and, therefore, in the absence of an officially recognized system of doctrines, this is a question that remains presently relevant in unique ways, in comparison to other Christian(ish) theologies. Read the rest of this entry »

“Oh look, they’re selling Girl Scout cookies. Turn around up here.”

En route to home after a full day of running errands, my wife had spotted an awning on the street corner to our left, surrounded by several girls in uniform and a woman seated at a table in the middle. I immediately turned around to enter the parking lot adjacent to their location. As we entered the lot we noticed a man on the side of the street with a sign, “Homeless. Any help appreciated.” His appearance–ragged clothes that looked lived-in for weeks, long scraggly beard–was typical of the many homeless we often see in Provo/Orem, usually on busy street corners or near bustling commercial centers. We pulled past him into an empty parking space and my wife exited the van to purchase some boxes of cookies. I couldn’t help, of course, gazing over at the man with the sign. We all do that, I think, when confronted with members of our societies that seem out of place, homeless and otherwise. They seem to exist, to echo Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, somewhere within the bare existence of refugees and the utterly Stateless. They seem out of place in our presence, ghosts that fade in and out of existence, rootless, without any real identity that ties them, even loosely, to the rest of the citizenry. And we can’t look away, either out of compassion, or sadness, or fear, or disgust, or anger, or unease. Read the rest of this entry »

Near the end of his magnum opus on Christian love, Works of Love, Soren Kierkegaard includes a curious little meditation on loving those who are dead. Entitled “The Work of Love in Recollecting One Who Is Dead,” Kierkegaard considers how our love for the deceased may reveal more about our own ability to love than anything else. This is because those I love in life “cover over” certain parts of me, influencing me so profoundly that I cannot fully see myself as I really am. Even more significantly, in my love for those I prefer to love, I cannot see how I truly love and constantly deceive myself that my love is authentic and sufficient. This is because in the presence of the Other I am almost always tempted to not disclose everything, to hold something back, not be fully honest and sincere. But when I try to relate to one who is dead, there is really only one person in such a relationship: me. Only the one who is living is fully disclosed. The dead person cannot speak, change, disclose herself to me, or reciprocate my love. The dead person is a withdrawn object, the occasion for my own full self-disclosure. Nevertheless, following Kierkegaard’s insistence throughout the book that the Christian is charged with the daunting task of loving all the people we see (everyone we see is or should be our neighbor in the Christian worldview), we have a particular duty to recollect (as opposed to remember) our own dead (heroic baptizers of the departed famous, baptizing outside of family lines, take note). Read the rest of this entry »

….when acting as such.

Well now that’s a fascinating tidbit of information concerning what a prophet is. (I wonder what Isaiah would have thought about it?)

Those of us familiar with this quotation from Joseph Smith are likely accustomed to seeing it deployed in defense of the view that those holding the calling of “prophet” do not always speak in an official capacity, thereby staving off criticism that everything a prophet says must be official and binding church doctrine. Further, this statement is said to illustrate that prophets are fallible human beings, “just like the rest of us.”  Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been in well over 20 wards in my relatively short lifetime. Some I remember fondly, others…….not so fondly. The last two wards in which my family and I have resided have been eye-opening experiences for my wife. She’s had strongly (though not exclusively) negative experiences with ward members. I’m sure most of you are familiar with these in some way or another; they are unfortunately not exceptional: purposive exclusion, gossip, derisive comments, biting criticism, cold indifference, etc. We’ve experienced the same to varying degrees in other wards, but in these two cases she has had the opportunity for the first time to become a member of communities of women outside of the Church. What she found, for her, was astonishing; these women were welcoming of her in ways that so many women in our wards had not been. When they discovered she was a Mormon (a point she did not readily volunteer at first, fearing a backlash), there was mostly just curiosity, though occasionally peppered with fascinating conversations with the Christian women in these groups about shared and cherished values and beliefs. Read the rest of this entry »