Tired Road Warrior

The following was written in a review by Mary Pols of the book Devotion by Dani Shapiro:

“Devotion does not provide a template for finding your personal Jesus (or whoever).  It’s a history of Shapiro’s quest to explore her own faithlessness.  She grew up in an Orthodox household but cast aside her Hebrew religious study as a teenager.  As an adult, her sense of God was that if he existed, he was not a micromanager.  (”As far as I knew, he had never gotten me a parking space.”)  She wants to believe in something but doesn’t know what.”

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The following is an excerpt from an article by Peggy Fletcher Stack which originally was published in the SLTrib on Feb 13th, 2009:

(Daniel) “Fairbanks (associate dean at UVU in Orem) believes with most biologists that evolution is the unifying theory in the field. . . .

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Two articles in this week’s periodicals paint a less-than-flattering image of official and unofficial Mormons.  The first appeared in Time Magazine in a review of the movie “The Book of Eli.”  The second was the lead article (complete with cover photograph) in the National Geographic.  I have no particular comment on either article, but it is interesting to see how we are portrayed in the popular press.

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In response to your speech of October 13, 2009, at BYU-Idaho, I will not be joining you in the ”march” against Prop 8 proponents.  I realize that “there is a battle underway,” but I am on the other side, along with the likes of Harry Reid, Marie Osmond, and Steve Young’s wife.  For me this is a civil rights issue and not a religious one.  And I agree with Harry Reid, there must be more important ways for my church to spend its time and money.

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About the only official (or near official) Mormon publication I enjoy reading these days is BYU/Magazine.  The recent edition (Fall 2009) is an excellent case in point.  I really enjoyed the Commentary “Loving Our Neighbor” by Barbara Culatta, a BYU professor of communication disorders.  Ms Culatta is a convert to the Church from Catholicism, and has a brother who is a priest.  Her essay was a condensed version of a devotional address given in February.  After reading the one-page sermonette in BYU/Magazine, I decided to find the whole text.

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I feel strongly that members of the human race are co-creators of the Earth with God.  That we will be held accountable for the impact we have on this planet.  The creation was not a static event, but very much a dynamic event.  The earth is evolving even as I write.

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In a recent BYU/Magazine (Summer 2009) there is a thought-provoking article titled:  “Why Giving Matters”.  The author — Arthur C. Brooks, a non-Mormon — makes the case that it is financially rewarding to give in a charitable way.  While I found reading the article to be rewarding, I’m not confortable with its tenor or basic conclusions.

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Elder Dallin Oaks, in the April 2009 Semi-annual LDS conference, spoke about “Unselfish Service”.  I had great hopes for this conference talk.  Elder Oaks is a highly respected jurist, educator, writer, and GA.  But his talk fell well short of my expectations.

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Pope Benedict XVI recently revoked the excommunication of four rebel Catholic priests in an attempt to seek reconciliation with an uber -traditionalist Catholic Order — the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX).  Ordinarily this would seem like an internal affair only significant to Catholics.  However, it turns out that one of the priests – Richard Williamson — is a holocaust denyer who claimed that no Jews died in gas chambers during WWII.  Not a good PR move for a Pope who has pledged to tackle anti-semitism.

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After 400 years, the Vatican is rethinking its image of Galileo Galilei.  Instead of being a heretic, he is being recast as a man of faith.  Top Vatican officials are now saying that Galileo should be named the “patron” of the dialogue between science and religion.  But this embrace only goes so far.  There were plans in 2008 to place a statue of Galileo in the Vatican gardens, in honor of his invention of the telescope.  These plans were scrapped, no explanation given.

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