Rough Stone Rolling

The Christmas tree attacked Elder Evertsen. I kid you not. There he was, Elder Evertsen, kneeling in the living room for his nightly prayers, when suddenly he heard a shuka-shuka kind of rustling and, looking up, he witnessed his Christmas tree, full of tinsel & bulbs, whipping down, trying to assault him. The startled elder [...]

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    A curious thing happened with the blog yesterday. I was idly checking the visitor stats (they’re usually lean & mean as this is a really under-the-radar site) and noticed a major spike in traffic. Weird, I thought. Did a search engine suddenly grab some meta tags and give it a high position? Unlikely. [...]

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  Now I know how Brigham Young felt when Joseph was martyred and the Saints looked to him for guidance. He didn’t feel anywhere close to ready for the task, and desperately pleaded with God that a leader would emerge from inside. My calling– bestowed a month ago– doesn’t have the gravity or urgency Brother Brigham’s did, [...]

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Professor Joseph Ginat, a foremost authority in archaeology and anthropology, and a senior advisor in Arab Affairs to multipe Israeli prime ministers– from Golda Meir to the present– is not very well known to the general LDS membership, but he should be. Besides being an intelligent and influential scholar, besides the many titles he’s earned [...]

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  The political buzz over Mitt Romney has shifted to a higher gear this past week, especially regarding his courtship with the evangelicals and Religious Right. It’s a great opportunity for the Church to clarify itself to the nation, regardless of the turnout. As I expressed in a previous entry, I’m entertained by how some evangelical leaders– should they choose [...]

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A friend, the son of a former temple president, once shared something with me his father suggested to him, and I still mull over the implications. He said, “You know how before we came to this earth, we were all brothers and sisters, children of our Heavenly Father?” Uh-huh. “We were brothers and sisters to [...]

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I love a good laugh in the morning. Today I was greeted with this article in my inbox: “EVANGELICAL LETTER: “GALVANIZE SUPPORT AROUND MITT ROMNEY, SO MR. GIULIANI ISN’T THE UNINTENDED BENEFICIARY OF OUR DIVIDED SUPPORT AMONG SEVERAL CANDIDATES”: A prominent evangelical supporter of Mitt Romney has written a memorandum to 150 conservative Christian leaders, [...]

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Once again, the highlight of Conference for me was the Priesthood session, where the men don water buffalo hats and hear the things the women aren’t ready for.  I could point to at least four talks that spoke directly to me. The “anger” talk by Pres. Hinckley is particularly noteworthy. I’ve cultivated anger to such a virtuoso level, if [...]

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