Every once in a while at work, we have a big email storm. It usually begins with someone sending out an email to a large, open access distribution list about a topic no one cares about.
Then the ‘Reply to All’s begin.
For those of you who aren’t email experts, there’s an oft overlooked button that gets terribly overused in Corporate America, and that’s the “Reply to All” button. It is the magic button that sends your response to everyone who the message was sent to, not just the sender.
One of the common quibbles of the disaffected members of my church is their claim that church leadership is a bunch of old men who are “out of touch” with the ‘real’ world.
Well, last weekend we had a nice General Conference in which they demonstrated how ‘out of touch’ they were. Among other things there were…
I’ve been privileged to know some amazingly gifted people in my life. One of these people is a guy name Tim. Tim was one of my roommates in college, and I daresay the roommate that had the best net influence on me. Tim encouraged and understood me, in spite of my personality quirks and weird sleeping habits, in such a gracious way.
Besides being one heck of a person, Tim is an amazingly gifted vocalist and composer/arranger. This is his quartet singing one of his original settings of “How Great Thou Art.”
Enjoy! This sends chills up my spine every time!
[flashvideo filename=/video/reprise_howgreat.flv /]
In Sunday School lately, we’ve digressed back to the time in our youth where it was uncool to read things outloud in class. I mean, what’s more embarrassing for our budding egos than mispronouncing the name Kishkumen or Pahoran or Ammonihah? (come on folks… amone-aye-hah? or amun-eye-uh? pick one!)
So lately to counteract the trend of deathly silence when the teacher asks “who will read…” I have been randomly jumping up and down in my seat, waving my hand in the air while shouting “pick me! pick me!” Totally kindergarten style! Then I proceed to mess up every proper name, place, and punctuation in the section.
The following video is a montage of photographs taken in Arizona by some LDS photographers. They do a really good job of capturing the humanity, essence, and beauty of the Christian message.
Enjoy!
[flashvideo filename=/video/ReflectionsOfChrist.flv /]
You can visit their website at http://www.reflectionsofchrist.org/
Many people ask, “if God exists and loves as much as everyone says he does, why doesn’t he speak to us like he did in biblical times?”
This video of Jeffrey Holland, an Elder of my church, gives an incredibly poignant summation of what I believe regarding the necessity of an open scriptural canon as evidence that God truly does love us… (ignore the annoying musical underscoring)
Continue reading How God Speaks to Man
Monday morning I woke up in a slight haze.
No alarm? Drat! I forgot to reset it after I had disabled it to sleep in on Sunday morning.
As I tried to sit up in bed I realized what it was I was experiencing… the Mormon Hangover.
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.
– George Bernard Shaw
I left the United States for the first time in 2000 to spend two years in Sao Paulo, Brazil doing Missionary service for my church. To take you back, this was before the average American even knew what a Muslim was and before Osama Bin Laden was a household name.
When I returned in August of 2002, something had drastically changed about my country. Flags flew on many more houses that usual. There were flags everywhere! Some enterprising guy had also created a novel American Flag lapel pin which everyone seemed to be sporting. People had somehow become much more proud of their country than I’d ever seen them, and more willing to do anything for it.
Then it dawned on me. I totally missed 9/11. Continue reading Patriotism
And Thus We Were Manipulated
Why Mormon Pop Music and CES Videos Bug Me
A while ago, on my way home from church, I was listening to a mix CD of Sunday music. When the song “His Hands” came on, I quickly pressed the next button, but unfortunately it was too late… the other person in my car had identified the tune. “I LOVE that song… why did you change it?” they said. So I was forced to go back and let them listen to it.
It took the rest of the trip home to try and explain the following:
Growing up, I listened to a lot of Mormon pop music. A lot. It mostly grew out of the fact that I often sang in church, so I tended to listen for new material, and to be part of that universe. I was practically an authority on all things Perry or Cope.