A Mormon Liturgy for Fourth Advent

I recently left a note here about the “liturgy” that our ward routinely does in honor of Remembrance Sunday and which I look forward to every year. We also enjoy a uniquely Mormon liturgy on Fourth Advent to celebrate Christmas properly as one — as a “ward family”. Hopefully the word “liturgy” isn’t misleading here: make no mistake, the meetings still had the rough and tumble of low church Mormon practices (i.e. this wasn’t a ritualized sung Eucharist or anything, just a slightly different readings-based format to Sacrament Meeting channeling the inspiration received by the Bishop in contemplating the Christmas message for the ward).

A Mormon Liturgy for Remembrance Sunday

Remembrance Sunday is the second Sunday in November, the Sunday closest to Remembrance Day, which falls on November 11 every year. Each year my ward celebrates Remembrance Sunday with a peculiarly Mormon liturgy that is wonderful to experience.

“By his grace ye may be perfect in Christ”: Some LDS thoughts on Grace and Commandments

Martin Luther dismissed the Sermon on the Mount as “the devil’s masterpiece” (ein Meister Stuck des Teuffels, German spelling as in original) (“Das heißt ein Meister Stuck des Teufels”, D. Martin Luthers Werke (Weimar, 1906), vol. 6, pg. 10). Luther called the Sermon on the Mount “the devil’s masterpiece” because, as he surmised in the essay, “the devil so masterfully distorts and perverts (verdrehet und verkeret) Christ’s true meaning through his Apostle [Matthew] especially in the fifth chapter”. (See the discussion of this, which includes the above quote, in John W. Welch, The Sermon on the Mount in the Light of the Temple, pg. 36 (London: Ashgate, 2009)). Martin Luther appears to have believed that Christ’s teachings in the Sermon on the Mount (as recorded by Matthew) weren’t compatible with what he (Luther) wanted the Gospel to mean, based on his own selection and elevation of a few verses from Paul over the rest of the corpus of scripture.

A Note on Revelation

I have always loved the Doctrine & Covenants and am excited for this year’s focus on that book of scripture in Sunday School.

The Influence of Education

Kudos to a New York University journalism student in Prague for an interesting story that involves Mormons and religion (ht:T&S).

BOMB*: A Voice to Shake the Earth

A lot of water passed under the bridge between Alma the Younger’s dramatic conversion to the Gospel of Jesus Christ as a young man and his exclamation of desire to speak with the same voice of an angel that had shaken him to his very core those decades earlier.

Our Dead III

As in the past three years, we took the opportunity this year to celebrate Memorial Day (albeit a week late due to workload at the office on the actual holiday) by visiting the resting place of our dead. I described our previous excursions in the following posts: Our Dead, Our Dead II, and Convert Ancestor.

Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

A substantive article in the City Journal (ht:T&S), “Child-Man in the Promised Land”, documents what we have all observed:

Not so long ago, the average mid-twentysomething had achieved most of adulthood’s milestones—high school degree, financial independence, marriage, and children. These days, he lingers—happily—in a new hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance.

It is hard not to agree with the sentiment of the article: that we should be very afraid of what the new child-man will make of our society. Perhaps LDS men who were married with kids by 26 can chime in here. And wasn’t Brigham Young saying something about this 150 years ago? I doubt that Kay S. Hymowitz reads the Journal of Discourses though.

In the article, Hymowitz notes that

Not only is no one asking that today’s twenty- or thirtysomething become a responsible husband and father—that is, grow up—but a freewheeling marketplace gives him everything that he needs to settle down in pig’s heaven indefinitely.

To this I would only say “Have you heard of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?”

Would I be correct in assuming that the Mormon Church isn’t exactly the solution that Hymowitz is pining for in this article?

Some Still Talk of the Old Gifts, Part II

Brother I.C. was baptized last Saturday. Yesterday during Fast and Testimony meeting, he stood to share his most recent miracle — that of finding the Gospel.

The Fuzzy Line Between Corporate Teambuilding and Waterboarding

I found Wednesday’s Salt Lake Tribune article about a Provo motivational coaching business’s technique at corporate teambuilding to be a bit shocking but still had to laugh out of a sense of schadenfreude.