My Place to Reflect

During the summer of 2009, the teachers and priests in our ward chose to participate in a week-long summer camp at the Boy Scout Claytor Lake Aquatics Base near Radford, Virginia.  Activities at this camp all centered on aquatics activities.  Our young men participated in canoeing and kayaking, waterskiing, large boat sailing, snorkeling, motorboating, and even a pilot program for personal watercraft (jet-skis).  One of our goals for the week was that the experience would provide strong spiritual experiences as well.  In order to accomplish this goal, we started the week by challenging each of the young men to look for spiritual analogies in their activities. One example came from a class on the large boat sailing.  The youth had learned about a principle called tacking.  They reported that if you just try to sail with the wind to your back, you can only go as fast as the wind and would be at the wind's mercy.  Sailboats, however, are built with a k...

In the late 1990s, I was an adult leader for a Boy Scout unit (technically a Varsity Scout team) that was sponsored by my ward (the title given to congregations of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , aka Mormons, coming from the fact that congregations are organized geographically) in Tucson, Arizona.  One weekend in September, as part of Operation On Target , we were hiking up Picacho Peak  and I found myself in a conversation with a friend on the topic of evolution. My friend was trying to downplay evolution, saying that it was "just a theory" and using arguments similar to if not exactly the analogy of the watch formed without a watchmaker .  He was wanting to argue that schools really should be teaching alternatives to evolution.  (I can't remember if we were talking about creationism or intelligent design.) At the time, I was working on my PhD in applied mathematics at The University of Arizona, with an emphasis particularly on the intersec...

The presidential election of 1992 was the first for which I would have been eligible to vote.  However, I was in the middle of my two-year Mormon mission and I was not registered for absentee voting, nor did I seek it out.  As part of my commitment to this mission, I tried to maintain a complete focus on my service and would not have carefully studied out the issues.  But this did not keep the election from creating a significant impression on my memory. I was serving in Billings, Montana, and a number of the church members that I interacted with regularly were fervently opposed to Bill Clinton.  They were convinced that a vote for the Democratic candidate were votes for evil.  Some of their arguments were persuasive to me, for the emphasis was on platform issues that would clearly show some conflict with my conservative religious background.  The night of the election, I heard the poll results declare that Clinton would win the election, and I literally ...

So the theory of the republican form of constitutional government is that the people select individuals that they respect and believe will be able to work out solutions for society's problems according to the restrictions of government established by the constitution.  Yet, if you are like me, I see the national government at least as being in a terrible state of dysfunction.  Democrats complain that the Republicans are obstructionist.  Republicans complain that the Democrats are out of control.  To the public, government seems bent mainly on electability and retention or gaining of control and power. As an independent voter, I find myself frustrated with both sides.  More importantly, I find myself frustrated at the inability of America to be able to carry on any honest conversation over the challenging issues of the day.  It is more important in the political climate to turn disagreement into opportunities to attack.  I want a platform where I can ...

EFY stands for Especially For Youth, and is an intensive religious retreat experience sponsored by the Church Educational System of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Several years ago, I heard the EFY theme song, which takes the LDS hymns "As Sisters in Zion" and "The Army of Helaman" and puts them together in a medley. As I sat listening, I felt inspired to try to write complementary verses that reverse the roles of the songs. Here is my most current version of the lyrics. I continue to fiddle with the words, but feel close to being finished. At such a time, I hope to see them published in a church magazine. These lyrics are my own creative work and I reserve the copyright for them for the time being. We'll Bring the World His Truth (The Army of Helaman ) Children's Songbook #172 (original music and lyrics by Janice Kapp Perry) (verse for women) We have been raised as Esther of old In loving families, prepared to go forth. Wit...

After the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan, Shintaro Ishihara, the governor of Tokyo mused, "I think it is tembatsu (divine punishment)" presumably for the Japanese being tainted with egoism and populism . Meanwhile, a Russian Orthodox priest, Alexandr Shumsky, wrote (use Google Translate to read an English translation) that the catastrophe must be a judgment of God, significant as occurring during Lent, for the technological progress toward a new world order and for an offense some in Japan caused against the motherland of Russia. A recent poll showed that while 56% of Americans believe God is in control of everything, 38% of Americans responded that natural disasters are a sign from God with 29% believing that such disasters could be divine punishment. Among white evangelicals, 53% believed that God punishes nations for the sins of its citizens. I've recently been reading some sections in the Book of Mormon that have some relevance to this issue. This post p...

One of the central themes of the BSA's Venturing program is to empower youth and young adults in reasoned, ethical thinking. One tool for this is the Ethical Controversy. An ethical controversy considers an issue where there are two fundamentally different ways of viewing a situation. Each individual attempts to explore as fully as possible one side of the issue, much like one would in preparing for a debate. However, unlike a debate, the goal is not to argue against the opposing side and "win" the argument. Rather, it is to ensure that both sides are as fully explored as possible. This fall, our Venturing crew has chosen to explore the Ethical Controversy of the Park51, the Islamic community center proposed to be constructed a few blocks away from the site of the World Trade Center and Ground Zero of September 11. This controversy, at the very least, pits the ideas of religious tolerance and freedom of religion with the realities of painful feelings of victims of a...