By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog

Ivan Aivazovsky’s “Jesus Walks on Water” (1888)

Readings: Matthew 14–15; Mark 6–7; and John 5–6.

The other night, my husband and I heard our 7-year-old daughter crying in her room, around 10:30pm. We knew she had fallen asleep a couple of hours earlier, so we went to her together, hoping that one or the other of us could help calm her down from a nightmare. “Why do I have bad dreams sometimes?” she asked us. Dave told her that when our brains are sleeping, they are still active and still creating stories for us, and even though it is no fun to have a scary dream, it’s comforting to know when we wake up that none of it was real. I added that sometimes if she wakes up from a dream and can’t shake the scared feeling, and Mom and Dad don’t immediately hear her and come to her, she can pray to feel strong and safe, too. [Read more…]

“Atan lantanë tana atani ëuvar; ar atani ëar tana haryar olassë.”

– 2 Nephi 2:27, author’s translation in Quenya

A calligraphic tengwar version of The Ataramma, the Lord’s Prayer in Quenya, by Danny Andries. Tengwar is one writing system that Tolkien invented for his invented languages. Source: http://www.ambar-eldaron.com/gwaith/andries.htm#aeadarnin.

Warning: this post is weird. It descends into depths of Tolkien nerdery previously unheard-of at BCC. Ye be warned.

Today is Tolkien Reading Day. Every March 25th the Tolkien Society chooses a theme and encourages readers to read their favorite passages from the professor’s work that relate to that theme, and read them on this day. This year’s theme is Tolkien and the Mysterious. That’s a topic with a lot of material, but one of the elements that contributes most to the sense of mystery—the sense that there is more to the story behind the story, is the presence of invented languages in Tolkien’s stories. Not just nonsense words with a “translation” in English, but full languages with internal rules of grammar, etymologies, and alphabets. This post will be an exploration of the idea of invented languages as it relates to the idea of the gift of tongues. [Read more…]

Rebbie Brassfield is a copywriter living in Southern California. In 2012 she created the now-emeritus website Normons.com to try to prove how normal Mormons are (lol). Currently you’ll find her blogging here.     

It’s been almost 6 months since we were asked to ditch the term “Mormon.” I’ve been reflecting on it lately, I think because I’m anticipating some sort of follow-up at General Conference and I am keenly aware of how badly I’ve done at it.

With each reminder that “Mormon” is out, I’ve felt what I can only describe as a sense of mourning. It’s a strange reaction, given that I am fully on board with efforts to represent ours as a global, Christ-centered church.

But as I’ve gone about trying to scrub the word “Mormon” from my vocabulary, I’ve realized how deeply it is intertwined with my identity as a Latter-day Saint. I’ve attempted to simply swap out the old lingo for the new, but the correct name of the church is not a synonym for all that “Mormon” means. [Read more…]

Last night I dreamed about Hell. Here’s what it looked like.

It was a hilly region filled with big boulders that people were pushing, at great effort, in big circles. There were two groups of people in this version of hell–Mormons and ex-Mormons–and they were pushing the rocks in opposite, though circular, directions. Boulder pushing took most of their effort, but, when they passed each other on their circular paths, they summoned all of their remaining strength to shout accusations at each other in the form of two rhetorical questions. The Mormons shouted, “Why did you leave?” and the ex-Mormons shouted “Why do you stay?”

This guest post is by Mette Harrison, whose many books include The Book of Abish, which was published this week by BCC Press.

A male friend of mine asked me a few years ago, when I complained about how few women spoke at General Conference, why it mattered to me. “If you believe the message is from God, then surely it’s the same message no matter who gives it.” This is, in a nutshell, what I think many men believe about male leadership within the Mormon church, and to be honest, about male leadership at work, in government, and in the media.

On January 11th of this year (2019) Brian Hauglid and Robin Jensen gave a guest presentation at the Maxwell Institute titled “A Window into Joseph Smith’s Translation.” I watched the presentation at some point later after the video had been posted online (and enjoyed it). Jeff Lindsay at Mormanity [1] has recently taken exception to that presentation, both here and here, to the effect that the speakers were irresponsible not to balance their more naturalistic take on the production of the Book of Abraham (including a probable belief he was translating the Sensen Papyrus) with some of the more apologetic scholarship on the topic. But for my part, I actually appreciated their naturalistic take on the process. Let me try to explain why. [Read more…]

I hear it’s almost Spring, in parts of the world that are not New England. For young women in Mormondom, warm weather means (more) modesty lessons. When I criticize the ways that girls are instructed about modesty among Latter-day Saints, someone inevitably asks (accuses), “Well, how would you teach it, then?” My answer is simple:

I wouldn’t. [Read more…]

Readings: Matthew 13; Luke 8-13

“The Gospel writers, in their wisdom, left most of the parables as open narratives in order to invite us into engagement with them. Each reader will hear a distinct message and may find that the same parable leaves multiple impressions over time. . . . Reducing parables to a single meaning destroys their aesthetic as well as ethical potential. This surplus of meaning is how poetry and storytelling work, and it is all to the good.”

–Amy-Jill Levine, Short Stories by Jesus

This week we launch into the Kingdom Parables–those brief narratives in which Jesus tries to eff the ineffable and give ordinary mortals some frame of reference for talking about the Kingdom of God. This is beyond a hard sell. The Kingdom that Jesus spent most of his ministry talking about is an earthly kingdom, but it is like no earthly kingdom that has ever existed, and its governing logic is absolutely foreign to natural humanity.

But we have to see it to be it, so Jesus tells us about the parts–much like the blind men describing the elephant in the famous poem by John Godfrey Saxe. Like a mustard seed, the Kingdom starts small and becomes a place of shelter; like a fishing net, it draws in everyone and throws back what it can’t keep; like a great treasure, a person who knows about it will be willing to sacrifice everything to get it. And so on. These are all imperfect and incomplete, but every one of them contributes something to the picture, and, if we add them all up, we might be able to imagine the whole elephant.

Carolyn Homer makes an exceptionally strong case that we have a religious duty, as Mormons and as Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (and these are two different things), to mourn with our Muslim brothers and sisters, to comfort them, and to share their burdens. I agree wholeheartedly.

And I am willing to go further still. I believe that we have a responsibility as both Latter-day Saints, and as citizens of a pluralistic democracy, to get to know our Muslim neighbors better, to understand them as we want them to understand us, and to love them as we want to be loved.

We have this responsibility with all of our neighbors, of course. It is basically what “the Gospel” means. But I believe that this responsibility is greater when it comes to those who practice Islam. There are several reasons for this. Here are three:

One of my favorite art exhibitions is the International Art Competition run by the Church and exhibited at the Church History Museum. Run every three years, it’s a great opportunity to see some of the artistic talent of church members from around the world. This year, 151 works of art from over two dozen countries are on display, with the theme “Meditations on Belief”, taken from Psalm 77: “I will meditate also of all thy work, and talk of thy doings.” [Read more…]

By now everybody has heard of the college fraud, bribery and cheating scandal. In case you haven’t: a bunch of rich folks paid a sketchy dude to find ways to cheat on college entrance exams and college applications, including lying and flat-out bribery to get their kids into high-ranked colleges that they would not have been able to get into on their academic or athletic merit.

We could say a lot about it, but one thing that really jumped out at me was a pair of statements made by Gordon Caplan, one of the parents caught cheating, and what they tell us about the nature of morality and rules. [Read more…]

I was recently reading one locality’s Stake Relief Society minutes of a bygone era, and noticed that, as we do in our weekly ward bulletins today, the various secretaries often noted who presided and who conducted the various meetings. Entirely unsurprisingly, these individuals were women, even if priesthood officers were present. I’ve read a lot of Relief Society minutes, but don’t know that I had ever previously asked myself about this practice. In fact, not having attended Stake Relief Society Conference (except as an occasional workshop presenter), I didn’t know whether this was still the case. A quick check with my wife suggests that it is no longer.
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I got a call a week ago from a woman asking me to meet with a member of the temple presidency about possibly becoming an ordinance worker. My Bishop and SP had both suggested my name. I was honored that they had confidence in me, but I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the idea; I’m already Executive Secretary, which isn’t a bad gig but it does mean meetings starting at 6:30 a.m. on Sundays, so I wasn’t exactly sure about the possibility of adding another substantial calling on top of that. But I have always enjoyed spending time in the temple, and I have friends from around the stake who serve there, so I resolved to approach this possibility with an open mind.  [Read more…]

Perhaps the most important single moment in my spiritual development was the moment that I realized that grown-ups aren’t supposed to be comfortable all, or even most of the time. We all need to be more comfortable being uncomfortable.
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I’ve been reading Hart’s recent translation of the New Testament this year, and have found it really quite illuminating. He concludes his volume with a “Scientific Postscript on Translation” that explains some of his more non-traditional renderings. Frankly, it seems like it is Mormon-bait, though it clearly isn’t. Hart generally renders things literally, and happily sloughs off post-Augustinian (and really, post-Reformation) theological tropes. The scholarly shade he casts is fun to read, even if it is tempered by his affiliation (he is Eastern Orthodox). I thought I would share some of my thoughts on the intersection of his translation and our tradition, with the caveat that I have no particular expertise in ancient languages or biblical criticism.
[Read more…]

The last temptation is the greatest treason
To do the right deed for the wrong reason.
  –TS Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral

We are now on week two of the Sermon on the Mount, and, like week one, there is no way that we could cover everything that needs to be covered in one blog post. But one blog post is all we (read: I) have time for this week, so we will have to make do. We must make choices–difficult choices–to make sure that all of the highlights get hit. So I am going to trace one theme and one rhetorical style through the two chapters, with an emphasis on Chapter 6, which I think is the more important.