12/30/2004
Scripture Mastery
Here's a fun website for those of you trying to keep up with your seminary students: LDS Scripture Mastery. All it needs now is an rss feed. Thanks for the great site David.
12/21/2004
More about Alma the Younger's poetry
I'm not sure how I missed it, but Meridian Magazine published a third article about the poetry of Alma the Younger back in November. The only reason I noticed it is that they just published a fourth. Looks like an early Christmas present to me.
12/20/2004
Writing a Hymn
Orson Scott Card has written a series of articles about writing hymns. This struck a chord with me and reminded me of an article from FARMS, Two Hymns Based on Nephi's Psalm (available in PDF only).
I've appreciated Alma the Younger's poetic style for a long time, so I sat down to try my hand at a hymn influenced by his words. This work is based on Mosiah 27:24-31 and Alma 36:12-24
I don't have any music written for this, but it should work well with the music from any 8686 hymn (slower music seems to fit the best).
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
I've appreciated Alma the Younger's poetic style for a long time, so I sat down to try my hand at a hymn influenced by his words. This work is based on Mosiah 27:24-31 and Alma 36:12-24
I was caught fast by sin's cold chain,
He took away my pain.
My limbs received their strength again,
I stood upon my feet.
I stood in darkness, endless night,
'til Jesus touch'd my sight.
Then oh what joy, what marv'lous light,
my soul was filled with joy.
The world groans in its bitterness,
but soon the Son will bless.
Each knee will bow, each tongue confess,
that Jesus is the Christ.
I don't have any music written for this, but it should work well with the music from any 8686 hymn (slower music seems to fit the best).
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
12/15/2004
Aspirin and too-tight hats
There's a new blog entry by John Bytheway at the Mormon-Life section of Deseret Book. He talks about an important facet of the way we (human beings) often think — focusing on symptoms and not causes.
I'm spending a lot of time looking at home teaching and other indicators of conversion in my ward right now. The desire for a quick fix to poor home teaching is not only not going to help 'fix' home teaching, it's liable to hurt.
(This entry's title comes from my comment at John's blog.)
I'm spending a lot of time looking at home teaching and other indicators of conversion in my ward right now. The desire for a quick fix to poor home teaching is not only not going to help 'fix' home teaching, it's liable to hurt.
(This entry's title comes from my comment at John's blog.)
12/13/2004
Good Bye Wump Blog
Wump Blog is going away while Danithew concentrates on finishing his Master's degree. Wump Blog has been a favored read of mine for quite a while. At least I can take solace in Danithew's comment that he's not going away, just his blog. I'll look forward to seeing his ocasional comments, and (when the time comes) a return to blogging.
12/09/2004
A New Stake Presidency - Part 3
About four weeks after our bishopric was reorganized, I got a phone call from the stake executive secretary asking my wife and I to come in and meet with our new stake president the next morning. During this meeting, he asked me to serve as the new elders quorum president. I spent a good deal of the day praying about the quorum, my role, and who should serve as counselors.
The elders quorum presidency was reorganized two weeks later. I have two wonderful brethren serving as my counselors, a member of the young men's presidnecy and the former second counselor. The following week, the last of the cascading callings took place. While there will be changes in the future, we've hit the end of a series of changes that have been enlightening and inspiring. At one point during this course, I wrote the following in my journal:
Indeed, times of change present us all with many opportunities for introspection and growth. It's up to us whether we'll take advantage of those opportunities.
The elders quorum presidency was reorganized two weeks later. I have two wonderful brethren serving as my counselors, a member of the young men's presidnecy and the former second counselor. The following week, the last of the cascading callings took place. While there will be changes in the future, we've hit the end of a series of changes that have been enlightening and inspiring. At one point during this course, I wrote the following in my journal:
There are a number of brethren in the ward who could be called as our new bishop. This has lead my family and I to do a great deal of thinking and praying -- Are we living the gospel to the best of our ability? Are we going to be able to support our new bishop and his counselors? Will we be able to be a strength to the ward in this time of change?
No matter what happens, this has been a fruitful time for us. We have identified many places where we can improve. I hope that we will exercise our faith and make these improvments.
Indeed, times of change present us all with many opportunities for introspection and growth. It's up to us whether we'll take advantage of those opportunities.
12/08/2004
A New Stake Presidency - Part 2
It took longer than I'd thought it would for our Bishopric to be reorganized. Once again, the time leading up to it were awash in speculation. Having felt the witness I'd prayed for when the stake presidency was called, I began praying for the same kind of witness in this reorganization. My ten year old son and I spent some time talking about why it was important to have your own testimony and witness of these callings, and he spent some time praying for a witness himself.
When the call came (in mid-October), I was again blessed with a confirmation of the call. The new bishop is a very humble man, who has a great deal of leadership experience. His first counselor was first counselor to our previous bishop as well. The new second counselor was serving as the president of the elders quorum, which meant there was more churn ahead.
In a nice show of meekly serving, the former second counselor helped pass the sacrement the week after the reorganization (we have three active Young Men). He ended up passing sacrament to the new bishopric and the others on the stand.
When the call came (in mid-October), I was again blessed with a confirmation of the call. The new bishop is a very humble man, who has a great deal of leadership experience. His first counselor was first counselor to our previous bishop as well. The new second counselor was serving as the president of the elders quorum, which meant there was more churn ahead.
In a nice show of meekly serving, the former second counselor helped pass the sacrement the week after the reorganization (we have three active Young Men). He ended up passing sacrament to the new bishopric and the others on the stand.
new blog to read
I just followed a pointer to Virtual Theology. I have to say that I enjoyed it. I'll look forward to reading it in the future.
-pate
-pate
A New Stake Presidency -- Part 1
Some time ago, I wrote about the impending reorganization of our stake presidency and implied that I'd be writing more about it. I'm finally getting around to it.
In the days leading up to Stake Conference (in September), I seemed to spend more and more time praying that I'd be able to have a witness of the callings being made. It was on my mind a lot, and the speculation that whirled about made the topic hard to avoid.
During one of the initial sessions, I had the opportunity to sit with Elder Sorenson. It's always interesting to be in the presence of a general authority, in my experience they bring a special presence. Having just been taught by him, and knowing that we had either already called, or was just getting ready to call, the new stake president I felt a strong confirmation of the business he would be conducting.
Then in our Sunday morning session, Elder Sorenson announced the new presidency. The president and his first counselor where both called from the high council. They were men who I respected and who's spirituality I'd experienced. The real shock came when they announced the new second counselor, my bishop. Over the last two years I've worked closely with him as the ward clerk and as the ward mission leader. I know that he'll be a tremendous asset to the stake and will make an excellent counselor. Once again, I felt a strong confirmation of the calling of these brethren.
With our bishop moving on to a new calling, more changes lie ahead.
In the days leading up to Stake Conference (in September), I seemed to spend more and more time praying that I'd be able to have a witness of the callings being made. It was on my mind a lot, and the speculation that whirled about made the topic hard to avoid.
During one of the initial sessions, I had the opportunity to sit with Elder Sorenson. It's always interesting to be in the presence of a general authority, in my experience they bring a special presence. Having just been taught by him, and knowing that we had either already called, or was just getting ready to call, the new stake president I felt a strong confirmation of the business he would be conducting.
Then in our Sunday morning session, Elder Sorenson announced the new presidency. The president and his first counselor where both called from the high council. They were men who I respected and who's spirituality I'd experienced. The real shock came when they announced the new second counselor, my bishop. Over the last two years I've worked closely with him as the ward clerk and as the ward mission leader. I know that he'll be a tremendous asset to the stake and will make an excellent counselor. Once again, I felt a strong confirmation of the calling of these brethren.
With our bishop moving on to a new calling, more changes lie ahead.
a pattern of procrastination (and a side note)
I've been trying to write about the patterns mentioned in my last post, but I haven't been able to get any traction. Instead of fighting it any longer, I'll just write about some other stuff for a while.
On a completely unrelated note, I'm saddened to see that so many people are getting involved in the apparent action against Brother Palmer. Publishing a press release or otherwise discussing something that should remain a private matter strikes me as both inappropriate and incredibly sad.
-pate
On a completely unrelated note, I'm saddened to see that so many people are getting involved in the apparent action against Brother Palmer. Publishing a press release or otherwise discussing something that should remain a private matter strikes me as both inappropriate and incredibly sad.
-pate
11/13/2004
A Pattern Language for Perfecting the Saints
Pattern languages (see the Pattern Language Page at the C2 Wiki) are an idea that came out of the work of Architect Christopher Alexander and have found homes in a number of other disciplines. Pattern languages are collections of patterns which describe recurring problems within a domain and provide a template for deling with them. Each pattern is described in four parts:
Pattern Name - a handle for identifying the pattern.
Problem - a description of when the pattern applies.
Solution - the elements that make up the pattern.
Consequences - the results and trade-offs of applying the pattern.
So, why is all of this important? I've been thinking about the roll of local church leaders in perfecting the saints (see Retrenchment and Reaching Out), and I'm starting to boil my ideas down into a catalog of patterns in a pattern language for perfecting the saints.
Here are the patterns I've been thinking about so far. I'm going to try to write about one each week, I'd appreciate any comments to help improve the patterns I describe or to add others that I've missed.
Perfecting the Saints: Pattern Catalog
Pattern Name - a handle for identifying the pattern.
Problem - a description of when the pattern applies.
Solution - the elements that make up the pattern.
Consequences - the results and trade-offs of applying the pattern.
So, why is all of this important? I've been thinking about the roll of local church leaders in perfecting the saints (see Retrenchment and Reaching Out), and I'm starting to boil my ideas down into a catalog of patterns in a pattern language for perfecting the saints.
Here are the patterns I've been thinking about so far. I'm going to try to write about one each week, I'd appreciate any comments to help improve the patterns I describe or to add others that I've missed.
Perfecting the Saints: Pattern Catalog
- Agents of Change
- Families on the Edges
- Focus Families
- Focused Effort
- Follow the Spirit
- Home Teaching is the Key
- Not Just Once a Month
- The Rising Tide
- A Six Month Window
- Teaching Teams
- To Serve and Protect
- Touching Everyone
- The Transition
it's nice to see a response
11/08/2004
New blogs at Deseret Book
Deseret Book is starting to host a couple of blogs; John Bytheway and Michael Mclean. It looks like they might begin to offer more as well. I've written a note to Matthew McBride (their contact for the Internet Division) and Jeanne Crippen (their Marketing Division contact). Here's what I wrote:
Matthew,
I love the fact that Deseret Book is making a leap into blogging. I think
you've made some good decisions in having Michael McLean and John Bytheway
as your first two bloggers. I'm anxious to see who else ends up blogging
for you. I have a couple of concerns though:
1) Bloggers for hire don't seem to have the voice or the passion that
most bloggers do. I'll be anxious to see how this works out. For
example, neither of Michael nor John has posted any replies to the
comments on their blog entries -- blogs work best when they are a vehicle
for conversations.
2) You don't provide an rss feed for the blogs. this makes them almost
useless for me. I use an aggragator to browse blogs I'm interested in,
then jump to the blog to read the entries that catch my attention. I
think you'll find that this will become the way almost everyone reads
blogs -- please don't paint yourself out of that picture.
There are a number of interesting, strongly written LDS blogs out
there. I hope to see good things from Deseret Book's bloggers as well.
-pate
Matthew,
I love the fact that Deseret Book is making a leap into blogging. I think
you've made some good decisions in having Michael McLean and John Bytheway
as your first two bloggers. I'm anxious to see who else ends up blogging
for you. I have a couple of concerns though:
1) Bloggers for hire don't seem to have the voice or the passion that
most bloggers do. I'll be anxious to see how this works out. For
example, neither of Michael nor John has posted any replies to the
comments on their blog entries -- blogs work best when they are a vehicle
for conversations.
2) You don't provide an rss feed for the blogs. this makes them almost
useless for me. I use an aggragator to browse blogs I'm interested in,
then jump to the blog to read the entries that catch my attention. I
think you'll find that this will become the way almost everyone reads
blogs -- please don't paint yourself out of that picture.
There are a number of interesting, strongly written LDS blogs out
there. I hope to see good things from Deseret Book's bloggers as well.
-pate
10/13/2004
lack of posts (sorry)
It's been a while since I've taken the time to post anything here. I've been rather busy with class, work, and church related responsibilities. Hopefully I can get back on track.
Another article on Alma the Younger
A while agao, I posted about an article on Alma the Younger on Meridian Magazine's website. They've recently added another article in the series.
10/07/2004
By Study and Also By Faith: Knowledge, Understanding, and Wisdom
Just seen on By Study and Also By Faith, a cool new blog by Tyro, By Study and Also By Faith: Knowledge, Understanding, and Wisdom.
I'm looking forward to seeing more of Tyro's thoughts.
I'm looking forward to seeing more of Tyro's thoughts.
9/10/2004
Alma's poetic genius (from Meridian Magazine)
I just noticed this: The Poetic Genius of Alma the Younger.
I'm a sucker for information about Alma the Younger, so I was pretty jazzed. This article is a nice introduction, and it really whetted my appetite for more.
Thanks for writing it Br. Talley. When is the next articles due out?
I'm a sucker for information about Alma the Younger, so I was pretty jazzed. This article is a nice introduction, and it really whetted my appetite for more.
Thanks for writing it Br. Talley. When is the next articles due out?
Retrenchment and Reaching out
Over on his blog, grasshopper recently posted about Church Activity (a topic near and dear to my heart). He pointed out that latter-day saints tend to have higher levels of public activity than other christian denominations, but that those publicly active members are less likely to be privately active. (Something that I view as a measure of conversion -- a topic for a later post.)
I pointed out that you could combine these statistics to get a rough measure of private activity among all memebers. Doing so indicates that general LDS and non-LDS private activity rates are about the same.
Dave then pointed out that there are two possible explanations: 1) the church encourages public acts over private ones, or 2) the church is able to encourage public acts even among those who are not privately active. While I don't have any real evidence, I lean to the second view Dave mentioned. While it's dangerous to speculate from an unsupported base, I wonder if there are lessons to be learned here.
Last night I attended a meeting about Home Teaching, inactivity, and missionary work. In our stake we're home teaching about 40%, inactivity levels are pretty high (we have over 450 propective elders), and convert baptisms have dropped to less that 50% of last year's rates. We've obviously got some work to do. The question is: Where do we apply our limited resources?
One school of thought would be that we should focus on those who are not publicly active, encouraging them to attend church meetings and fellowship with their fellow saints. Hopefully as some of them respond to this invitation and become publicly active, some of those will become more privately active as well.
Another tack would be to focus on the publicly active but privately inactive members first, encouraging them to become more devoted, more deeply converted. As these members begin to exercise greater faith, they will be better able to reach out to those that are not publicly active. I think this was the idea behind the 'retrenchment' movements of the 19th century.
Do we need to retrench before we can reach out?
I pointed out that you could combine these statistics to get a rough measure of private activity among all memebers. Doing so indicates that general LDS and non-LDS private activity rates are about the same.
Dave then pointed out that there are two possible explanations: 1) the church encourages public acts over private ones, or 2) the church is able to encourage public acts even among those who are not privately active. While I don't have any real evidence, I lean to the second view Dave mentioned. While it's dangerous to speculate from an unsupported base, I wonder if there are lessons to be learned here.
Last night I attended a meeting about Home Teaching, inactivity, and missionary work. In our stake we're home teaching about 40%, inactivity levels are pretty high (we have over 450 propective elders), and convert baptisms have dropped to less that 50% of last year's rates. We've obviously got some work to do. The question is: Where do we apply our limited resources?
One school of thought would be that we should focus on those who are not publicly active, encouraging them to attend church meetings and fellowship with their fellow saints. Hopefully as some of them respond to this invitation and become publicly active, some of those will become more privately active as well.
Another tack would be to focus on the publicly active but privately inactive members first, encouraging them to become more devoted, more deeply converted. As these members begin to exercise greater faith, they will be better able to reach out to those that are not publicly active. I think this was the idea behind the 'retrenchment' movements of the 19th century.
Do we need to retrench before we can reach out?
9/08/2004
Feelings, imagination, and promptings of the Spirit
Is my testimony of the restored gospel just some wistful imagining?
In his essay "Is Theology Poetry", C.S. Lewis refactors the title into "Does Christian Theology owe its attraction to its power of arousing and satisfying our imaginations?" which reminded me of Jeff Lindsay's recent post The Anti-Mormon Plea: PLEASE Don't Pray about the Book of Mormon. We are often accused of letting our feelings or our imaginations take the place of "real inspiration" when we ask people to pray about the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon or when we bear testimony of our experiences after having done so ourselves.
In another essay, "Transposition", Lewis gives a good model for dealing with this. He describes transposition as the representation of a richer reality in a poorer medium. Believing that it is better to blame ignorance than malice, I believe that this concept applies very well to spiritual experiences like praying about the Book of Mormon. Those who have not experienced spiritual promtings (viewing the transposition from beneath in Lewis' words) have no basis for knowing that the Spirit does testify in repsonse to prayerful seeking, and will deride our testimony as the effects of imagination. Those who have had this experience (seeing the transposition from above), can see and respond to the fuller picture.
In answer to his reworked question, Lewis answers that true Christianity does not appeal to our imaginations, but to something higher. It makes unpleasant (from a natural perspective) demands on us which only make sense after we have undertaken to answer them. When we are able to view the transposition of our faith from above, then we find that it appeals to our Spirit. When we act on the word, we find that we are drawn closer to God. When we pray in faith to know that the gospel has been restored in these latter days, we hear the Spirit's whispered response.
Let us pray
After I started thinking about this, but before I posted it, I saw a pair of posts related to this grouping of ideas over on Ebenezer Orthodoxy — A Second Witness and On the Authentication of Scripture.
In his essay "Is Theology Poetry", C.S. Lewis refactors the title into "Does Christian Theology owe its attraction to its power of arousing and satisfying our imaginations?" which reminded me of Jeff Lindsay's recent post The Anti-Mormon Plea: PLEASE Don't Pray about the Book of Mormon. We are often accused of letting our feelings or our imaginations take the place of "real inspiration" when we ask people to pray about the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon or when we bear testimony of our experiences after having done so ourselves.
In another essay, "Transposition", Lewis gives a good model for dealing with this. He describes transposition as the representation of a richer reality in a poorer medium. Believing that it is better to blame ignorance than malice, I believe that this concept applies very well to spiritual experiences like praying about the Book of Mormon. Those who have not experienced spiritual promtings (viewing the transposition from beneath in Lewis' words) have no basis for knowing that the Spirit does testify in repsonse to prayerful seeking, and will deride our testimony as the effects of imagination. Those who have had this experience (seeing the transposition from above), can see and respond to the fuller picture.
In answer to his reworked question, Lewis answers that true Christianity does not appeal to our imaginations, but to something higher. It makes unpleasant (from a natural perspective) demands on us which only make sense after we have undertaken to answer them. When we are able to view the transposition of our faith from above, then we find that it appeals to our Spirit. When we act on the word, we find that we are drawn closer to God. When we pray in faith to know that the gospel has been restored in these latter days, we hear the Spirit's whispered response.
After I started thinking about this, but before I posted it, I saw a pair of posts related to this grouping of ideas over on Ebenezer Orthodoxy — A Second Witness and On the Authentication of Scripture.
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