Stupid Mormon Tricks - Dissent

I can't find the original blog post, but there had been one some people were sharing that was a "humorous" response to ordain women. It was taking the track that if we are going to talk about equality, let's talk about how they have better chairs and tablecloths in Relief Society, and went on in that vein. It was stupid and condescending enough that at the time I though it should be it's own "stupid Mormon tricks" post, but I had other things I needed to get through. Today seemed like time.

I have my own Women and Priesthood post, and I don't intend to rehash that, but other things I have read have made me think that it is important to cover how we handle disagreements.

For the one writer's specific points, there is nothing stopping any teacher or presidency member in the Elders Quorum from bringing a tablecloth. It doesn't happen because no one finds it that important, so equating that to Ordain Women is a trivializing thing. For women who truly feel that not having the priesthood makes them less, mocking those concerns is not going to help.

I think there are a few wrong types of thinking that can contribute to this. One is that if something does not cause me inconvenience or pain, it is not a problem. That is an issue of awareness and sensitivity, but it allows all sorts of institutionalized inequality to flourish. By that token it is fine if some places don't serve people of color, or there are no ramps or wheelchairs for the physically disabled. To only care about that which affects you personally is the opposite of Christ-like.

Building upon that, it is not uncommon for many people to respond with anger to any challenges to the status quo. I suspect that anger is based in fear, especially for those who do well under the status quo, but we have to remember how much is just tradition.

I know that when the first women started wearing trousers, or wearing their hair cut short, it was taken as a sign of something horrible, whereas now it is no big deal. There was never anything inherently evil about women with short hair in pants, people just weren't used to it. They adjusted and the world kept turning.

So it's worth pointing out that there is no rule about what women wear to church. It is a tradition that we dress nicely to show respect, and it is tradition that nice dress for women is skirts and dresses, but when investigators show up wearing jeans, or short skirts, or things we don't normally see, we accept that, and if some women who know the traditions want to wear pants, that is pretty minor. There are much more important things to worry about.

The other thing I saw was someone whom I love angry at these women because he felt like they were giving the church a bad name, and it might make it harder for him to share the Gospel. I do sympathize with that, because there are certainly members of the church who make me cringe. However, we need to have confidence in the truth of the Gospel.

There is already plenty of controversy, and there is no reason to expect that to decrease. Our faith needs to be strong enough that we can say that we believe in prophets, even if we don't understand why they said certain things. If the Gospel was going to wilt under a little bit of hardship, it wouldn't be very useful.

We believe contention is bad - that is true - but the presence of disagreement does not have to automatically mean contention. I can think that you are wrong, and still love you. I can also think that you are wrong about what needs to happen, but correct that there is a problem, and caring about that is much more likely to result in harmony than the majority shouting down the minority.

We all have room for plenty of repentance and growth, and sometimes the first step to finding that is to quit writing off the people you just know are wrong.

Garden Report - April

I have started a garden.

It's something I had been thinking about, but I didn't think I really had the time. I was tempted by having a new community garden so close, but it felt like actually committing to it would be crazy, and then I felt that I must. I now have a community garden plot.

I felt like I was getting a late start, and just needed to get something into the ground as soon as possible, but looking around more I decided that I did have some time, so first I worked in some plant feed, and Friday night I worked one cubic foot of soil into my 10x10 patch. Seeing how far that went, I kind of wish I had bought two bags, but I am sticking with the one for now.

I am going to do a mix of some seed and some plants, and the amount of agonizing that I am doing about that is ridiculous, but I keep reminding myself that this is a learning year, and it's okay if I don't get the greatest results.

The other thing that I have is a bag of egg shells in the freezer, and this helps tell the greater story of how this year is going and will go. I was thinking that I don't know anything about gardening, but then I keep remembering some things that I do know. The egg shells are one memory.

Back around 1999 I took a Master Food Preservers class, and then I did volunteer work in the community. I spent many Saturday's in a booth at the Hillsboro Farmer's market, and I was usually with a Master Gardener. Almost every week, my companion was asked about blossom end rot.

The people asking did not call it that. They mentioned having dark spots on the ends of their tomatoes, and it came up frequently enough that I memorized the answer. It is a common problem, especially with the moisture we have in this area, but calcium would help, and you could add egg shells to the soil.

Bearing that in mind, I knew I should get some egg shells for when I planted my tomatoes. I had never actually done it though, so I looked it up on the internet. The internet recommended pulverizing the shells so you have a powder. Our blender isn't that good, so I have small pieces of shell, but that's something. Others raised questions about salmonella risk, and recommended washing the shells, but someone else, without specifically mentioning salmonella, said to freeze the shells, so that's why their in the freezer now.

As I am working on this, I suddenly find myself remembering things. Marigolds keep away pests. I did some container gardening and liked Early Girl tomatoes and Quinault strawberries. I think the Quinault was just something I stumbled onto looking for ever-bearing versus June-bearing plants, but I think someone had recommended Early Girl.

So there are some things I remember, but they are partial memories, and I can augment that with research. That's kind of how I work in most areas, so it's the most logical garden strategy.

Anyway, my plan is to report on what is going on in the garden once a month. I don't know that more frequent updates would make sense, but I hope there will be at least some news, and some progress, every month through the growing season. Then, having learned some stuff, I can figure out next year.

For right now, I am not being ambitious. I can wish I had gotten on the ball earlier, and knew more, but I could also wish that I was younger, or better at physical labor, or had a comfy pair of overalls for when I am messing around in the dirt. This is just starting from where I am, and seeing how it goes.

Wash your hands and take off your shoes!

I'm being emphatic for such mundane material, I know.

It started with my sisters recently mentioning an article about how dirty planes are. It mentioned things like the airlines not washing the blankets between uses, and things like that, none of which was that surprising. The only thing that kind of caught me off-guard was fecal matter on trays.

I thought maybe passengers traveling with babies would not necessarily use the trays for diaper changes, but somehow in trying to move things around would get some on there. Truly, I did not really think that much until someone on the news was saying that bachelors have dirtier homes than single women, and again, there was fecal matter on surfaces like coffee tables.

My first thought was that men just don't wash enough. If you leave it on your hands, it can end up on all manner of things that you touch. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean that it's not there, nor does it mean that it can't get you sick.

Wash your hands!

Having now searched for articles, there is more to the issues. This one article indicates that a big culprit is men putting there shoes on the table, because walking around over time will generally get you at least some fecal matter:


http://www.nbcnews.com/id/41514712/ns/health-mens_health/t/dirty-truth-bachelor-pads-have-times-more-germs/#.U0q-eVchVio

This is a good reason to take off your shoes when you enter your house. I'm not saying not to put your feet on the table, but not with shoes on.

There are probably a lot of things that can be said about cleaning here as well, and I will probably get to them in some future post. For now, if you can spread less, that is one less thing to worry about.

It's not just fecal matter. Taking off your shoes can also help with pollen, and of course as the article points out, the fecal bugs also indicate that the presence of other bugs that are culprits in the spread of colds, flu, and diarrhea is likely. Why track these things all over your house?

And then wash your hands:

http://www.cdc.gov/handwashing/

Reading the Old Testament

Lately during family scripture study, it has been common for there to be sentiments expressed of not liking these people, or some things being weird, or things to require explanation. When this happened two weeks ago, I said that I had told them it would be like this, and suggested skipping parts or something, and Maria said "It's important."

That's exactly right. The Old Testament is hard, but it is important.

Since we started reading the scriptures together, we had been through the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants twice, and the New Testament, Pearl of Great Price, and Genesis once. (I thought that reading Genesis first would help the Pearl of Great Price make more sense.) The repeats were because we started to synchronize with the Sunday School schedule, which means that this year is the Old Testament.

I had many ideas to avoid it, like maybe we should re-read the things we had only read once first, which I did not suggest, or that we should focus on specific sections, which we did talk about, and yet everyone was for just reading it all.

I thought that they were not fully grasping how much that entails, and how annoying some of it can be, but they have a better grasp than that.

And, I am kind of the same way. Many times when I have been on my way through the Old Testament I have resolved to just skip the Song of Solomon, because there is no spiritual value in there, and then I read it anyway, because I feel guilty. I know the argument about it being an allegory of Christ's love for His people; but if it was intended as that I don't think there would be so much focus on breasts. It is non-spiritual writing from a source where we have spiritual writing, but I feel committed to the whole thing, and my family is like me in this way.

There are highs and lows. We have been having more discussion, because it is needed; but there are disputes about how to pronounce "shittim wood" (and very immature laughter; also any time there is an ass). We are currently synchronized with the Sunday School schedule, but we will not stay that way because this will probably take us three years.

There are sections that are not inspired writing. It is most obvious with the Song of Solomon, but that may not be the only spot.

There are places that are translated incorrectly. The Joseph Smith Translation helps with some of that, but there are also passages that can be interpreted in multiple different ways, where multiple interpretations can be valid (especially in Isaiah, there is a good example in https://www.lds.org/ensign/1990/01/the-bible-only-4263-languages-to-go?lang=eng).

There are times when the people do seem awful and the law does seem harsh, but that goes back to many things I have written about the work God has to do in getting us to where we need to be.

There are sections that you can see where it was necessary to write them down, but maybe not so necessary for us to read them, like the Israelite census we get in Numbers.

The Old Testament takes more work than any other book of scripture. It was only on my last time through that 1st and 2nd Chronicles came alive for me, and I remembered being amazed that I had read it other times, and not seen what it was. At the same time, I remember something from the Chronicles sticking with me on a previous time through that I used on a talk I gave when I was a new missionary (May 1993 as a matter of fact). I pulled out a grain back then, even if it was not a full harvest.

Leviticus is frustrating, when so much of it is outdated, but there are things that have helped. One was a chapter in a book that I could only skim because it was so boring. No, it was not a book of scripture. It was The Biophilia Hypothesis, and the tenth chapter was called "The Sacred Bee, the Filthy Pig, and the Bat Out of Hell: Animal Symbolism as Cognitive Biophilia" by Elizabeth Atwood Lawrence. (I believe it had been published previously, as the book was a collection of writings.) And even though I could not get into the book, skimming it made a point about how the connections drawn between different animals, and clean and unclean, was a way of putting an order on the animal world for the Israelites.

They were starting over after years in an idolatrous country, so there were laws that were separating them from those practices, and there were rites to help them remember their deliverance from bondage and to look forward to their eventual deliverance from sin, and there is rich symbolism, but it is pages and pages that often seem irrelevant.

Other articles have helped. There is one that I wish I could find again, about how while the Law of Moses seems harsh to us, it was something kinder for the time.

I don't love that we will be spending the next three years on this, when everything else we could do within a year, but it is better going slow. One thing I had to do last time was break up the Psalms, where I read one at a time before whatever else I was reading. While many of them are beautiful and inspired, a whole section of them is cloying.

We are doing 10 to 12 pages a week, and while that is slow, there is probably no single section of 10 to 12 pages that will be unbearable.

It does take unexpected turns. Last week as we were reading about the construction of the Tabernacle, and the Ark, I said we should watch Raiders of the Lost Ark so they could picture it. I thought I was joking, but we are watching it tonight after reading. Not especially spiritual, I guess, but really, they did a good job on the design and the priest costume, and then the face melting and death shows that proper authority is still required.

If while we are watching we are also stitching up angel dolls* for service, well, that's just how we roll.

*Angel dolls are dolls that the doctors at a local hospital use to explain surgeries and procedures to young patients. Our stake supplies the hospital, and Julie is in charge of it for our ward. I think they should call them "hospital buddies", because "angel dolls" sounds like they are not that optimistic about the prognosis, but I may just not like thinking about little kids getting sick.