Normally a news junkie, I haven’t been watching and listening as obsessively as I normally do while I’ve been traveling over the past two weeks or so.  But my impression is that this aspect of the recent mass shooting in Oregon hasn’t been getting as much attention as it perhaps should have received:   http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/10/02/day-christians-were-martyred-on-american-soil.html   Posted from New York City     Read more

    Two interesting items on Catholic-Mormon relations, which, I’m very pleased to say, are probably better now than they have ever been:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865637653/Mormon-couple-surprises-Catholics-as-volunteers-for-popes-visit-World-Meeting-of-Families.html?pg=all   http://patersontimes.com/2015/09/27/catholic-and-mormon-churches-partner-to-refurbish-straight-and-narrow-facility/   Posted from New York City     Read more

    If you haven’t already watched it, you might enjoy this very open and candid thirty-minute press conference.  I thought it quite a treat:   http://www.ksl.com/?sid=36655741&nid=1016&title=3-apostles-called-to-lds-church-leadership&s_cid=queue-3   You’ll get to know the three in a remarkable way from their unscripted comments.  They’re impressive.   And you’ll hear about the way in which they were called, their varied backgrounds, etc.  Very interesting.   Posted from New York City     Read more

    http://mfa.gov.il/MFA/IsraelExperience/History/Pages/Rare-Late-Bronze-Age-Egyptian-artifacts-discovered-in-the-Jezreel-Valley-9-April-2014.aspx   Posted from New York City     Read more

    Yesterday, I cited the testimony of a “Mrs. Palmer,” who knew Joseph Smith in Palmyra.   Others agreed with Mrs. Palmer in their judgments about Joseph’s character. “I knew all of the Smith family well,” said the non-Mormon Orlando Saunders. “They have all worked for me many a day. They were very good people. Young Joe (as we called him then) has worked for me, and he was a good worker; they all were.”[1] “My father,” recalled Joseph... Read more

    Wow.  Without intending to do it, of course, this article actually provokes some theological reflections in me:   https://medienportal.univie.ac.at/presse/aktuelle-pressemeldungen/detailansicht/artikel/reducing-our-own-pain-is-also-reducing-empathy-for-pain-in-others/   I need to learn more about the study upon which it’s based, but it seems to me to have some potential bearing upon the purpose of our entire learning experience here in mortality.   And perhaps it’s not unconnected with the incarnation and atonement of the Savior himself:   And behold, he shall be born of Mary, at Jerusalem which is... Read more

    “It is never too late to be what you might have been.”  (George Eliot)   Posted from New York City     Read more

    It seems that the Lord doesn’t take dictation from newspaper commentators, bloggers, and academics, nor even from political correctness and ethnic quotas.   I’m especially delighted with the appointment of Elder Stevenson, whom I knew slightly before his call as a General Authority and even as a mission president in Nagoya, Japan — where one of my sons served under him.   I was actually in the underground lobby of the Church Administration Building when he and his wife... Read more

    We spent the bulk of yesterday (Friday) at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum at “Ground Zero,” where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center once stood.  (The Pope was there at the Memorial and Museum about a week ago.)   At first, I found it interesting, and, of course, more than a little sobering.  But then we reached a portion — it’s much bigger than I had at first realized — that was absolutely moving.... Read more

    Kevin Taylor reminds me of this wonderful letter from Hugh Nibley to Sterling McMurrin, a philosophy professor at the University of Utah and an old sparring partner of Professor Nibley’s whose religious views could be described as, at most, non-orthodox Mormon — or, perhaps more accurately, as agnostic:   https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SpEu5zputSwuA-QG6WTiRM7MpUuVjzMmTsfpo7zbgpk/edit#heading=h.arolcxe0i15c   Posted from New York City     Read more