They’re not our friends:   http://www.vocativ.com/news/256909/isis-san-bernardino-mass-shooting-america-burning/   Incidentally, there’s a small but significant Mormon connection to San Bernardino:  The first English-speaking settlement was established by Latter-day Saints sent there by Brigham Young, presumably as part of a plan to build a chain of settlements reaching to the ocean so that Deseret could have a seaport.  Unfortunately, the colonists had to be recalled as a result of the so-called “Mormon War” of 1857.   And here’s a curiosity:  One... Read more

    This piece was published before the shootings in San Bernardino, but it seems especially relevant now:   http://time.com/4100408/a-criminologists-case-against-gun-control/?xid=fbshare     Read more

    The official Church website for its 2015 Christmas initiative can be found here:   https://www.mormon.org/christmas   Take a look!  Participate!     Read more

    I’m slow on linking to this, but I hope that it’s true:   http://themindunleashed.org/2015/11/anonymous-takes-down-5500-isis-accounts-24-hours-after-isis-called-them-idiots.html   It’s heartening to see such often-antisocial folks turning their skills to a good purpose.  I hope that others with unique abilities will also play whatever roles they can in fighting this scourge.     Read more

    John 13:31-35   It’s impossible to improve upon this passage by commentary, but I offer an unfamiliar translation (by J. B. Phillips) of a simple and very familiar text:   “Now I am giving you a new command—love one another. Just as I have loved you, so you must love one another. This is how all men will know that you are my disciples, because you have such love for one another.”   The test of discipleship isn’t, it turns... Read more

    “I think the act of reading imbues the reader with a sensitivity toward the outside world that people who don’t read can sometimes lack. I know it seems like a contradiction in terms; after all reading is such a solitary, internalizing act that it appears to represent a disengagement from day-to-day life. But reading, and particularly the reading of fiction, encourages us to view the world in new and challenging ways. . . .  It allows us to... Read more

    A nice discovery, announced just yesterday in Israel:   http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4734069,00.html     Read more

    You can watch Jenny Oaks Baker’s video performance of “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” — a part of the Church’s “A Savior is Born” campaign — here:   http://www.jennyoaksbaker.com/videos/     Read more

    I still vividly remember the exquisite thrill that went through me when, many years ago, I first heard Es ist ein Ros entsprungen.  The sheer beauty of it entranced me.     I love the melody.  But I also love the lyrics, the message.  And, alas, I’ve never seen an English translation that does them justice.   But here, anyway, is a nice version of the piece by a German quintet:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA4pBDNZDx0     There was a time when... Read more

    Luke 22:24-30 Compare Matthew 19:28; 20:24-28; 23:11; Mark 9:35; 10:41-45; Luke 9:48; John 13:4-5, 12-17   These apostles were good men.  Their selection and their subsequent biographies demonstrate that.  But they still had problems with their desire for approval and status.   Surely the battle against our own egos is among the hardest we face.  Even when we do good things, and even when we do self-denying things, it’s difficult not to want our goodness, our humility, our... Read more