I’ve just received the following note from Valerie Hudson Cassler:   Welcome to the Fall 2015 issue of SquareTwo! The full table of contents can be found on our archives page here.   We’d like to announce two new editorial board members: Neylan McBaine, founder of the Mormon Women’s Project and author of Women at Church, has joined our board, and B. Kent Harrison, emeritus professor of Physics and Astronomy at BYU, is our new book review editor. Welcome to... Read more

    And please watch this extraordinarily moving 2.5-minute “letter” from the husband of one of the victims in Paris to the people who sponsored the attacks:   http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34862437       Read more

    A unique perspective on the recently-controversial policy of the LDS Church regarding homosexual marriages and the children of homosexual couples:   http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/3261558-155/op-ed-at-18-i-chose-the       Read more

    John 16:29-33   Jesus is confident here that, even though the disciples will be scattered, he won’t be alone because the Father will be with him.   I think, though, that even he may have been surprised by what he would soon experience during the process of the Atonement.  Because, for a period of about twenty-four hours, from the beginning of his suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane through the culmination of his agony on the cross, the... Read more

    “It was said of Abba John the Persian that when some evildoers came to harm him, he took a basin and wanted to wash their feet.  But they were filled with confusion, and began to do penance.” From the “Sayings of the Desert Fathers”   I can’t help but be reminded of Alma 24 — a remarkable and powerful story.     Read more

    I meant to write something about this a few days ago, but am finally getting to it:   http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2015/12/02/trump_isis_is_our_1_threat_–_we_cant_be_fighting_everybody_at_the_same_time.html   I find the proposal that we deliberately target the families of ISIS militants revolting.  But it’s not only morally repulsive, it’s tactically and strategically foolish.  (To put my opinion mildly.)   I can think of no more effect strategy to multiply our enemies in the Islamic world and to jettison whatever moral credibility we may have than to... Read more

    A remarkable a cappella version of a very popular Christmas carol:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJ_MGWio-vc   The carol was written by Katherine Kennicott Davis, an American classical music composer and teacher, in 1941.  (She originally called it “The Carol of the Drum.”)  The Trapp Family Singers — think The Sound of Music — recorded it in 1955 and it became even more popular when the Harry Simeone Chorale recorded it in 1958.   I’m guessing that the latter may have been the version that... Read more

    John 16:23-28   “I came from the Father and have come into the world,” says Jesus to his disciples.  “Again, I am leaving the world and going to the Father.”   Plainly, Jesus is claiming some sort of pre-mortal experience for himself.     Read more

    Lindsey Stirling provides the “Social” element for today in the 2015 “A Savior is Born” Christmas campaign:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VzprYCxPBQ&feature=youtu.be&mdcid=10000     Read more

    John 16:16-22   In retrospect, this seems a pretty clear prediction of Christ’s resurrection — which, as much as anything of which I can even conceive — would transform the disciples’ (and any future disciple’s) sorrow into unspeakable joy.   The historically-demonstrable emergence of the unstoppable early apostle-missionaries from what at first seemed clearly just another failed messianic movement ranks among the many persuasive arguments, in my mind, for the plausibility of claims of the triumph of Jesus... Read more