Today is one of the most significant and dreaded holidays on the Mormon liturgical calendar: Mother’s Day! Wheatmeister posted a poll about the best gift for Mother’s Day (but neglected to include women’s health care as an option).
If anyone here doesn’t know what a Mormon Mothers Day service is like, read Steph’s experience or have a look at what’s on the program at the Abbottsville Fourth Ward!! (Followed up by how the Mothers Day should end.) Or see this amusing comic:
And if you think that image is not a fair characterization, read this post by a faithful, active Mormon woman. I’ll give you a teaser:
When we arrived, he asked my husband to come in and speak with him first. So I assumed that my husband was getting the calling.
To my surprise, after I was ushered into the room, the bishops counselor extended a calling to me. He explained that it was church policy to obtain the husbands permission before his wife even found out about the calling.
When my husband remarked dubiously that this is the first time hed ever encountered such a policy, the counselor said (somewhat defensively) that they had been instructed to do it that way by the stake president. According to him, its part of an ongoing effort to help the brethren step up to their responsibility to preside in their homes.
[…]
I was sitting in the pew after Sacrament Meeting, and a brother in the ward came up to our row. He said hello to me, and then promptly turned to my husband, to ask if it was all right if I substituted in his primary class next week.
Wow. Scenes from a bizarro parallel universe that I’m very glad I don’t live in myself. On the other end of the spectrum, Hawkgrrl wrote a great talk on how to honor mothers, and I like this (non-LDS-related) mother-daughter project.
After Mother’s Day, the biggest topic this week was public interpersonal disputes. Ralph Hancock has made some new ripples. Simon Southerton responds to FAIR’s response to his work. And apparently the Maxwell Institute was going to go after John Dehlin (and maybe thought better of it…? Either way, the debate is a must-read for fans of flame-roasted popcorn…). Speaking of John Dehlin, he’s looking for your stories of leaving the faith for a new podcast series.
The world is still talking about Mitt and his Mormonism. The latest story was Mitt’s past as a bully — people are debating whether it’s unfair to judge Mitt-the-adult for stuff he did as a kid in High School. Mr. Molly wrote a good analysis of the CoJCoL-dS’s recent video on political neutrality.
I also have some links about Obama’s statement in support of gay marriage, but I’ll put them in the comments of Alan’s post.
In church news, everyone’s favorite stake president takes on the Big Bang. Scott Carrier’s new book Prisoner of Zion looks interesting!! Does the church need to repent? We have a bit of a point-counterpoint on converting people to and from Mormonism. The Book of Mormon: finally in Hebrew (against the orders of the CoJCoL-dS). Daymon found family search rife with errors. And in funnies of the exmo reddit, let’s play play a game of “what’s wrong with this picture?”
In exmo community, Sulli is making and discussing a transition that is very familiar around these parts:
Many of those former bloggers would fade away. They would disappear, posting less and less until they had all but quit blogging completely. Some blogs just disappeared. There one day and deleted the next with no explanation. Others would post good-bye posts where they would explain that they had moved on and were choosing not to blog anymore. I always wished that they had kept blogging. I wanted to see what happened after someone got over everything and was able to move on. What happened after Truman walked through the door at the edge of the world with the exit sign next to it? I always felt that what happened after getting over it all might be more important than what brought them to that point of moving on in the first place…
For you, I will post a small sample of the former-Mormon blogs who have written about other subjects entirely this past week: teaching kids about cultural differences, sticking to a budget, quitting a bad job, contemplating cairns, writing, plus a few exmos discussing related topics like Humanist morals and Glenn Beck.
It’s true that people in this community tend to move on and typically go through long periods of not thinking about Mormonism at all. On the other hand, we have a constant stream of new people. I added six new sites to Outer Blogness just this week — look at this one, or meet Gabe (who also posted his story on Atheist Underworld). And not everyone fades away — there are plenty of exmo bloggers I’ve known for years. At Sunstone this Summer, I’ll finally meet (in person) runtu, who was a charter member of Outer Blogness from its beginning back in January 2006. So, Andrew, stop worrying!! 🙂
OK, exmos sing it with me!
Make new friends, but keep the old — one is silver and the other gold
Actually, that reminds me of a little problem I wanted to mention: Since Chino moved, he has not had time to keep the headlines, TV, and Radio features of this site updated. I keep meaning to keep them updated myself, but I’ve found that — given my IRL responsibilities — I have just about enough time to keep up with Outer Blogness (and this column in particular), but following the news, videos, and podcasts in real time so that I can keep our news feeds timely is somehow one thing too many. Note: I still have a bunch of emails to write (after I’m done with this column) regarding plans for Sunstone, and I’m really going to eventually get around to the server upgrade that I kept promising a while ago (though that may end up waiting until after Sunstone). Anyway, if there’s anyone out there who keeps up on the LDS-interest news who’d be willing to help keep the media feeds here at MSP updated, I would really, really, really appreciate it. To get you started, here’s a video about polygamy in Bountiful, and a hilarious Colbert video about America’s favorite right-wing painter!!! (Colbert is so naughty…)
Have a great Sunday, and don’t forget to call your mom!! 😉