Something to read

I love this post. (I love most posts by this author, but this one is especially nice.)

Crisis of Twitter

Who do I believe? The church or Wil Wheaton? WHY would twitter make me choose?

My eleven-year-old self may have been in love with you Ensign Crusher, but I think I'll have to go with my religion. Despite its unimpressive, over-generalized proof. *gulps down third can of Dr. Pepper*

Apprehension, wealth, and number two

I often want to blog about religion, but I'm apprehensive. It feels inappropriate to discuss the scriptures and my testimony on the same site where I talk about poop. (Maybe I should just stop blogging about poop. Yes, these links are all unique posts concerning poop.) I've thought of starting yet another blog devoted solely to religious topics, but religious experiences are meant to be shared. And I'm lucky enough to have people that actually read this blog. I have mentioned church before, but there have been many moments where I've wanted to share an insight or an experience, and have held back. How do all of you other bloggers feel about this? Does any body else share similar reservations about publicly blogging about their testimonies? I think community is a vital element of testimony (I'll expound on that in another post), so I'm going to try and overcome my apprehensions and post more often about religion.

(Even though I'm pretty sure everyone who reads this knows me in real life, here's some brief background. I was born and raised in the LDS church. I went to BYU. Since college, I've been sporadically active and am trying to change that "sporadically" to "regularly." Regardless of my activity level, I've always lived a Mormon lifestyle and have a very strong testimony of the church.)

I'm going to start out slow. I LOVE Mormon blogs. My absolute favorite is Feminist Mormon Housewives (site not working currently, see here for now), though By Common Consent is a close second. Earlier today, I was reading a book review on Times and Seasons. It reminded me of several other excellent posts I have read on various bloggernacle sites about wealth and prosperity. For a couple of highlights, see here, here, and here (especially Amri's comment 17).

Each of those posts resonated strongly with me. Not because I think I'm wealthy (though I know compared to the rest of the world, I really am), but because I see a lot of wealth in my family. My family is very conservatively Mormon. They are very generous with sharing their wealth. But they subscribe to the idea that wealth is a result of righteousness and hard work. I think hard work often (but not always) relates wealth, but I firmly believe that wealth is largely obtained through luck. There are plenty of evil lazy rich people and even more good hard-working poor people. Prosperity (as defined in terms of dollars and assets) comes from being dealt a really good hand and knowing how to play it. I don't like conflating it with religion and righteousness.

I remember a family vacation, at my uncle's lake house. I was sitting with my dad in the upstairs living room, overlooking the lake that was just outside the back door. My dad asked me if I ever look at all this and wonder why I wasn't born into this family. Why I had the bad luck to be sent to my dad instead of his more prosperous younger brother. My dad was acknowledging the luck aspect of wealth, but still assigning it more importance than I think it deserves.

Whether I like it or not, ideas of wealth and prosperity are heavily infused into our religious culture. It's an interesting and often emotionally-charged discussion. Is wealth good or bad, or is it more complicated than that? For those of us lucky enough to be wealthy (and really, all Americans should be considered wealthy), what are righteous uses of that wealth? How much of that wealth should we be sharing? Where do we draw that line between want and need? While I'm not exactly sure how I feel about any of it, but it is definitely a discussion worth having.

I know that's kind of a cop-out ending. But if I felt like I had to have draw persuasive mind-blowing conclusions every post, I'd never talk about anything but poop. And thus ends this installment in Jamie Tries to Talk About More Religion. (This doesn't mean I'm going to stop posting about silly things. In fact, look for another one of those obnoxious Survivor posts coming soon.)

The same blood flows in my veins.

I just read this post on By Common Consent: There is an End to Race. As a teenager, I was fascinated by the doctrines concerning lineage. In seminary we'd learn things about being the lineage of Ephraim and how someone adopted into that lineage literally had their blood changed. Now, we learned a lot of things in seminary that ended up not being true, but that literal blood change thing is based on a quote by Joseph Smith: “the effect of the Holy Ghost upon a Gentile, is to purge out the old blood, and make him actually of the seed of Abraham.” I remember hearing from a friend that their friend's brother's roommate's cousin's step son (or something like that) found out that in their patriarchal blessing that they were from the tribe of Dan. We had a Young Women's lesson with the stake patriarch where someone asked if siblings could be from different tribes. He said that it was possible, and compared it to hair color or eye color. I remember thinking that was so cool, and being a little jealous that I, like everyone else, was the tribe of Ephraim. From the article I just read:

... one of the most significant findings of the Human Genome Project: that human beings have only (approximately) 20,000 genes.

Let’s do some math. You share exactly 1/2 of your genetic material with either of your parents. Move to an individual a generation back, and that person shares only 1/4 of your genetic material with you. You see what’s coming? How many generations back do you think you have to go before you pass the 1/20,000 threshold? The answer is that you share virtually no genetic material with your ancestors who were contemporaries of Christopher Columbus. Let me repeat that in more general terms: you are no more genetically related to your distant ancestors than you are to any randomly selected individual from anywhere on the planet. On the other hand, you do share an astonishingly high (compared to other species) percentage of your genetic material with virtually every person now living or who has ever lived.

So what does this mean in terms of tribal lineage? The blog writer draws this conclusion:

This means that being the literal, biological descendants of Abraham, or Noah, or Ham, or Seth, or Cain, or Adam is meaningless. Meaningless in the sense that, well so what — everyone else is too; and meaningless in the sense that you are not any more genetically related to any of them any more than you are to anyone else.

So really, we're all the tribe of Dan and the tribe of Ephraim, genetically speaking. Now if you read the entire article (which I highly recommend), you see that these conclusions don't automatically mean OH NOES! THE CHURCH ISN'T TRUE!! You really have to draw your own conclusions, but I like where the blog author goes with this. It makes the sudden blood transformation I pictured when I first heard this doctrine a little less dramatic. But it allows for a lot of 'what if' speculation that people like me love to think about, and most gospel doctrine teachers dread.

So what if that stake patriarch from my Young Women's class was right, and lineage really is like hair color or eye color? If we really are genetic descendants from every tribe (that has descendants), what determines dominant and recessive "tribe" genetics? Does that give new or different meaning to the literal gathering of Israel? I will quickly expose the limit of my knowledge on lineage doctrine and genetics pretty quickly if I keep going with the what ifs, so I'll stop. I guess this whole lineage thing still fascinates me, and this article just renewed my interest in it.

Why I skip church activities

With my sudden resurgence of church activity (actually going to things during the week) came a re-realization of why it's annoying to be single and LDS.

Last month's enrichment activity was a SPA night: There were mini-talks on "S"criptures, "P"rayer, and "A"tonement and then we all got our nails done and learned how to put on make-up. The activity was fine, I like bonding over eye shadow as much as anyone. The wives of the bishopric gave the mini-talks, and as usual with single women, treated us like primary kids. Actual question posed to a group of 20-something LDS women: "What book of scripture tells of Jesus's life?" We all looked at each other confused. Did she want a list of specific chapters? Did she mean His mortal life or resurrected life? The answer? "The bible." More than half of the women are returned missionaries! I think we're familiar with the basic premise of the bible. We all got a bag of gumballs to "chew" when we "chewse" to read the scriptures. That may entertain Ralph Wiggum, but we are supposedly adults. And I'd feel bad making fun of this if it wasn't for the rest of her lesson, but her testimony of the scriptures was solely based on how neat it was to read them to her kids, and to hear her kids read them to their kids. Ok, that's nice, but none of us have kids. Know your audience! Is it really so hard to find value in the scriptures for yourself? At least I got to try out some nice exfoliating cream.

So I find out from Jill that this month's enrichment activity is a corn maze. A corn maze and a swap meet. Not a swap meet where we bring all our crap and trade it, a swap meet where we "swap" guys with another ward and "meet" them. DURING ENRICHMENT. Jill is on the enrichment committee and I encouraged her to question the addition of guys to a Relief Society meeting. Apparently, the bishop has mandated that we have swap meets with enrichment every other month. We have FHE once a week, and several "ward activities" each year. Not to mention Munch 'n Mingle, Linger Longer, Break the Fast or whatever it's called. Oh and stake dances. Do we really need forced dating imposed on enrichment now too? Is there really so little value to women meeting together that they need to make the guys attend every other month? Why not just get rid of Relief Society all together! Or at least make the priesthood attend our Sunday meeting every other week. Just for singles of course. We can have meaningful adult interaction with other LDS women, but only once we're married.

I like single's wards. I like interacting with people my own age. But apparently, the only people I should be interacting with are men. I may switch to the regular local ward. Sure, they're mostly newly wed or nearly dead, but then church can just be church. Not thinly (or not at all) veiled opportunities to meet guys.

Public Humiliation at Church

I was reading old threads at this website, and have read several posts in the Public Humiliation at Church thread. It's very entertaining, and I wanted to share my story. That thread is several years old, so sharing on my blog seemed more appropriate. (I wouldn't want to humiliate myself.)

I was in Primary, and it was Easter Sunday. I was still in Junior primary, but in the oldest class. I specifically remember sitting in the back row. The sharing time lesson was on the crucifixion, and as a visual aide, the primary president had brought in cups of vinegar. There were six plastic cups on a tray, and we were supposed to pass them around, smell them, and decide if we would want to drink it.

But I'd been day dreaming (as usual) and didn't hear the set-up. All I noticed was that for some reason, they were passing out drinks! And that I was suddenly really thirsty. I remember thinking it was so unfair that the primary leader only put six cups on the tray. Six! There were around 30 kids in there, and I was in the back row! Luckily, it seemed like no one else was thirsty. Not even Jill and Carly, and I knew they'd never pass up free water. They'd take the tray, smell the water, and shake their head "no thank you." I was suspicious, but mostly anxious that all of the water would be gone before I could have any. I watched as the tray came closer, giddy that no one had taken any of the water. So it comes to me. I lean over the cup as if I'm smelling it (I had noticed everyone else doing that, and didn't want to be different), and nod "yes." Apparently my desire to be the same as everyone else was not overruled by my thirstiness. I go to drink it, and my teacher reaches over and grabs it away from me. I sit through the rest of primary hurt and confused. And a little thirsty.