This week’s Thursday Deseret News column is up:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865639594/Welcoming-the-worlds-religions-to-Temple-Square.html   Don’t miss going through the eight photographs that accompany the article.  They give some sense, at least, of what the program was like.     Read more

    https://www.ksl.com/?sid=37028894&nid=635&fm=most_popular&s_cid=popular-1     Read more

    Mark 11:18-19 Luke 19:47-48 Compare Luke 21:37; John 8:1-2; 11:45-53   Jesus is forcing a confrontation with the Jerusalem elite.  He’s challenging them.  His raising of Lazarus and his cleansing of the temple, in which he’s now teaching, have made him more and more public, and they have no choice but to react.  Of course, they could have accepted him.  That would have been one reaction.  But they chose another path.     Read more

    People tell me all the time that we should simply ignore the Middle East.  Let ’em kill each other if that’s what they want, I’m told.  It’s none of our business.   I understand such comments.   The region seems permanently violent and unstable.  Its many problems seem insoluble, and many there don’t even seem to want peace.  And we’re tired of wars.  We’re tired of spending billions, of dead and wounded Americans, for which, all too often, we’re... Read more

      “And should they die before their journey’s through . . .  Meh.  Life is tough.  Get over it.”   Or something of that sort, I suppose.   Slate magazine recently published an exposé — “a stunning investigatory story” — alleging that Latter-day Saint “missionary culture counsels strongly against seeking medical help” and that (apparently callous) Church “authority figures block access to care” for the young missionaries that, it seems, they heartlessly exploit.   Nathaniel Givens is unimpressed:   http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2015/10/slick-and-far-from-truth  ... Read more

      Read more

    This is a fascinating little item:   http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2015/35/full/   “And were it possible that man could number the particles of the earth, yea, millions of earths like this, it would not be a beginning to the number of thy creations; and thy curtains are stretched out still.”  (Moses 7:30)   Read more

    “Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire!” St. Catherine of Siena     Read more

    There are points here at which I disagree — I don’t, for example, concur with the description of the “September 6” excommunications as a “witch hunt,” and I’m considerably less condemnatory of the “heritage” that this article contrasts with “history” than the article itself seems to be  (see, for example, David B. Honey and Daniel C. Peterson, “Advocacy and Inquiry in the Writing of Latter-day Saint History”) — but, on the whole, I think that Brian Whitney’s balanced and... Read more

    Mark 11:15-17 Luke 19:45-46 Compare Matthew 21:12-13; John 2:13-17   Once more, the ever-accepting, totally non-judgmental Jesus asserted by some seems to be completely invisible in the New Testament.   Obviously, we can’t use his example here to charter our own harsh behavior toward those of whom we disapprove or with whom we disagree.  Jesus was the Only Begotten Son of God, the Messiah, and the Redeemer.  He was morally perfect.  We aren’t.  Thus, we lack not only... Read more