Photographed by firehole

Interesting erosion formations, Paria River Canyon

– License

The Utah caver visitor who died while in the cave head first facing down won’t be coming home. Seems his body is where it will be forever. God bless his pregnant wife and his family through what must be a horrible period in their lives!

I dressed as nicely as I could for my night on the town in Nairobi. I only had dress pants and a white office shirt to wear, which made me feel horribly inadequate, but it was the best I could do. I planned to go across the street to a popular club (I forget its name), because it was safe to go to the club and return to my hotel and Lonely Planet highly recommended it. I had tried contacting the other volunteers to see if they wanted to go, but there was no response. I felt even more isolated then, because they highly encouraged us to go out together to be safe and have fun, but I couldn’t even get a response from another volunteer.

Around 8:30, I went out to the club. Descending the elevator, I got more and more nervous since I was venturing out into Nairobi nightlife and I had never really been out on the town ever. The elevator doors opened and I walked out into the brightly lit lobby, feeling the scrutiny of the workers. I quickly exited the lobby and walked under the Nairobi night sky, feeling the crisp bite of winter wind on my bare skin. The club/bar was brightly lit and locals were entering with good spirits. Strings of lights hung across the patio as local music blared from stereos. I found a table and a waiter approached me. I ordered a Heineken, because I didn’t trust the local beer for the life of me. Tusker was the local favorite, but it didn’t smell or look good, so I avoided it. The waiter brought me my beer and I slowly sipped my beer while taking in the scene. Almost immediately, my stomach grumbled in extreme protest. I am quite used to my body’s grumblings, and instantly knew that I was going to be horribly sick shortly. I paid my bill, got up and left for my hotel room. I felt sicker and sicker as I made my way across the street. Some guy tried hitting on me as I left the bar, but I had to ignore him. Thankfully the lobby elevator was open and ready when I ran up to it.  The feeling of weightlessness didn’t help my growling stomach as I counted down the numbers, till my floor arrived. I practically ran to my room, unlocked the door, threw down my purse, and rushed to the bathroom. I threw up everything I had eaten that day and much more, as I hunched over the toilet. Shivering, cold, and alone, I lamented my “night on town” and its horrible conclusion. Once again, the Lariam took hold of my life and wouldn’t let go. My liver was so trashed by that point that it couldn’t even take a sip of alcohol. I crawled into bed, extremely worried, because I thought I was done with being sick. I carefully felt my abdomen, feeling each area just as Mrs. Curry, my high school anatomy teacher, had taught us to do physical examinations.

While feeling my abdomen, that was when I ran across my poor liver. Large, rock hard, and swollen, my liver clearly wasn’t in good shape, which was why my body had such a violent reaction to the Heineken. I realized then, that it wouldn’t matter if I was feeling temporarily alright, because my liver was in dire distress, and would take a long time to recover. I curled up under the blankets of the large, comfortable bed and rested until I fell asleep. I woke up the next morning, checked out of my room and grabbed a taxi. I had explored central Nairobi as much as I wanted, but I didn’t want to go back to Manaseh just yet. So I told the taxi driver to head to the Jacaranda Hotel in North-western Nairobi, an area which is filled with malls, shopping centers, and markets. From there I tried exploring the north-western side of Nairobi, but alas almost everything was closed for Madaraka day and to go further would require an expensive taxi. So I ended up staying inside the hotel room, after thoroughly exploring everything nearby. I still got stared at and attracted the attention of local store owners and taxi drivers, but I just kept going. I enjoyed being away from Manaseh and Stuart for however short a time. I missed the children, but I didn’t want to be near Stuart or Liz, so it was all I could do. I slept peacefully that night at the hotel, but I knew I needed to go back to Manaseh the next day, since I had to teach the computer classes at 10am and Stuart wouldn’t know how to teach them.

The next morning, I packed my things and went down to the lobby to check out. A large group of high school age students were there in the lobby checking out as well. They seemed so happy and excited. A complete contrast to how I felt about my trip now. I sat down in a chair and remembered how excited I had been to go to Kenya and help orphans. I was anything but excited or happy at that point. I desperately needed to go to the hospital to get my liver checked out and to take care of my persistent period as well as the constant diarrhea and vomitting, which never quite went anyway no matter what medicines I took. All my dreams and expectations for my trip to Kenya, completely fell through. I wasn’t situated in the nice, secured orphanage which I had been assigned. The other volunteers turned out to be complete jerks and the volunteer coordinator, who was supposed to be there for us, was never available. Instead, I was stuck half-way across the world, sick as a dog, with no one to turn to. I began fantasizing about meeting up with the American military or Mormons, who would help me out and treat me right. The large group of students were a complete contrast to me. They would go back home with fond memories and wonderful stories, while I would go home and recover physically and emotionally for a very long time.

I left the hotel and grabbed a matatu which was headed towards Karen. I felt better after having my little private excursion, no matter how dismal it turned out to be, just because it was something, rather than nothing. Riding on the matatu, I got to feeling rather remorseful for leaving the kids and being mean to Stuart, no matter how much he truly deserved it. I began hatching a plan to make it up to them. I love giving presents to people, especially when they don’t expect it, so I was really excited about thinking of which things to get for which people. I wanted to get the gifts before I came back to Manaseh, but alas the Nakumatt was closed for Madaraka day, so I had to postpone it for the next day. I slowly made my way back to Manasheh, carrying my small bag over my shoulder. Unlike Stuart, I was not greated by a rush of children. The house actually seemed strangely quiet and deserted. I walked upstairs and still didn’t see anyone, until I got back to my room. The door was open, which it shouldn’t have been because of the children, and I walk in to see Liz standing there.  I was shocked because Stuart said that she would be going to Orientation on Monday, which meant she was given housing for the Orientation, which would be nowhere near Manaseh.  I planned my trip and my return, according to when Liz was leaving.

And yet, there she was. Standing there, all perky, cheerful, and inquisitive, she just rubbed me the wrong way again. I was relaxed after my trip and wasn’t irritable, but as soon as she started interogating me about where I had been and what I did on my trip, I got annoyed again! It wasn’t so much what she was asking, but the way she was asking it. She practically pounced me with questions, and I couldn’t just brush her off easily, because she was so persistent. I was forced to tell her “Oh it was fine, I had fun. I’ll tell you about it later!” I hurriedly got out of there, before she accosted me again, and went to the computer room to prepare for the lessons. While I sat there, working on the computers, Pasta came up and was surprised to see me. He apparently thought that I wouldn’t return for a while more, but I explained to him that I came back because of the computer lessons. “Oh! but I told Agnes, and the others that you weren’t here!” Ah fudge! I came back so early because of the computer lessons, but now they weren’t even coming at all. I was disappointed, because I came back so early because I felt an obligation to teach those computer lessons. Otherwise I would have stayed out longer and explored a different area, but instead I chose to do the honorable thing and come back early. But as usual, any of my attempts to do the right thing at Manaseh, resulted in failure or uselessness.  Once again I felt useless, and impotent. Resolve filled me and made me determined to not let it get me down this time. So I sat there and continued to work on the lessons, since I had to create these projects from scratch, think about what they needed to know for each program, and how I can test their knowledge. It is always a time consuming task, but I had nothing else to do and wanted to actually do something useful, so focused on the gray screen in front of me.

Shortly after Pasta talked to me, Stuart found me in the computer room. He seemed surpirsed that I had returned early, but he also seemed tired and worn out for some reason. I wasn’t quite so mad at him today, but still his past behavior irked me and made me wary in my interactions with him. He seemed hesitant as well like he still didn’t know how to deal with me, even though all he had to do was talk to me like a friend and treat me with respect. He said that he was taking the kids to the Ngong Hills for a treat since it was a holiday weekend. “that sounds nice, have fun!” I responded. Stuart stood there for a little bit, as if he expected me to ask if I could come with him. I wanted to go, but didn’t want to be an imposition, since I figured Liz would be going. Stuart shrugged his shoulders a little and left to get ready for his trip. Before he left, I asked “Wasn’t Liz  supposed to leave for Orientation today?”  Stuart replied that she was staying for her orientation as well. Surprisingly he didn’t seem excited or happy, but rather resigned. Not sure if his reaction was more due to his exaughstion or his genuine displeasure at Liz staying an extra night. Oh, great another two days of Liz, I thought. Stuart shrugged his shoulders a little and left to get ready for his trip. Left alone, I continued working on my computer lessons.

After I finished working on the lessons, I did random work around Manaseh and played with the few children who didn’t go with Stuart for whatever reason.  Liz left for Orientation sometime later, when the driver came to pick her up. The rest of that day is kind of jumbled up in my mind. I can’t remember who came or left first, and I have spent all afternoon trying to remember, but to no avail. So I will skip the parts that I simply do not remember and resume where I do remember things clearly.

Liz attended her Orientation and Stuart went with her to speak to the Orientation group, just as he did with mine.  He sent me a text while he was at Orientation, saying that we would have yet another volunteer at Manaseh. His name was Robbie Schultz and he was about 20, from San Diego. I asked if he was going to actually stay at Manaseh or if he was just “visiting” like Liz. Stuart said that Robbie was actually assigned to Manaseh, so he would be staying. I was a bit relieved that he genuinely had a reason to be at Manaseh and he would be staying in Stuart’s room. After Orientation, Stuart left from there to go visit friends or something. Liz and Robbie returned later in the afternoon. Robbie was tall, had dirty blonde hair, and dark tanned skin. His voice seemed to hint at him being gay, which I instantly picked up on, but Liz insisted that he wasn’t gay.

He seemed friendly enough, but he barely noticed me and focused on Liz instead. Stuart stupidly forgot to unlock his door when he left, so Robbie couldn’t get into the room to settle in. Liz was talking very fast and insensibly to him, so I left the room to go work on the computer lessons. Liz and Robbie continued to ramble on and on, when Liz decided to show him around Manaseh. She started by showing him the computer room, where I was working, making me feel like a monkey on display again. She was rambling on and on when she burst out “Oh, you should probably be the one to show him around!” well duh, that would have been nice to let the volunteer who lived there for a month, to show around the new volunteer rather than the “visitor” volunteer. I shrugged my shoulders and told her to go ahead. It was clear that even if what she said was right,  she wouldn’t stop doing it or let me do it. Liz dragged Robbie around Manaseh, rambling on to her heart’s content.

Later that night, Stuart bothered to come home. They spent the night talking away and playing with the kids, while I did the laundry. I was getting frustrated because I wanted to be downstairs with the children, but either I was too sick to move or the laundry needed to be done. I wanted to hold Shiku and read to her. I wanted to watch T.V. with the boys. I wanted to let the girls do my hair. But I was always stuck doing laundry, which took forever since the laundry machine could only handle a very small load and the children’s clothes were always coated in the red dirt of Kenya. Each night Mama Rachel would insist that HER children’s clothes be separated from the orphan’s clothes so she could have them ready in the morning. Every single night, “Becca, do you have Rachel and Prudence’s clothes?” “Yes, of course.” Mama Rachel did not want to descend into the mayhem of her own orphanage, to pick out her precious children’s clothes. Throughout my time in Kenya, she rarely left her upstairs living room and didn’t bother to watch over the children except to occaisionally yell down to the children some order or reprimand. She lay on her couch like Ursulla, from the “Little Mermaid,” all fat, content, and coniving. For a pastor’s wife and orphanage director, she did very little work. She treated everyone, including me, like house servants who would take care of everything for her, so she could remain fat and content on her couch.

All of these additional stresses began to build on me again, making me tired and irritable. I took comfort in the fact that I would go out and get the presents for everyone the next day and would get to see the children smile and be happy.  The next morning I woke up, taught the computer lessons, which had become much easier with the addition of the projects. Instead of instructing the students every step of the way, I was able to sit back and answer their questions when they had them. After the lessons were finished, I left for Karen to go get the gifts. No one else knew about it, until I had to ask for Stuart’s help. I told him that I would need his help bringing in some gifts in the afternoon and that I would call him when I was nearing Manaseh. I told him to pretend to be a gentleman and “help” me take the stuff up to my room so that he could recieve his present and not have to share it with anyone else. He was so cute when I told him the plan. He got all excited, because he knew presents were coming, even for him, and that he would get to help out. As I left for Manaseh, Stuart and the others were all doing the beading project. Stuart called out to me “So what I am supposed to do again???” I looked back and told Stuart “I will call you!” Stuart nearly gave the whole thing away because he couldn’t remember. LOL!  I descended the hill laughing and smiling for the first time in a very long time.

I made my way to Karen and began picking up presents for everyone. For Damaris I got Ferrero Rocher chocolates. For the kids I got a big bag of Twix candy bars. Since I barely knew Liz or Robbie and they hadn’t really done anything to deserve something extravagant, I only got them Kinder Bueno Bars, which I figured were special enough. The big present was for Stuart. I felt remorseful and regrettful over how I treated him the last week, so I wanted to make up for it. The poor guy was on such a tight budget and he gave alot to Manaseh, that he couldn’t get anything for himself. He was always so hungry and I have an incredible urge to make sure that the people around me are well fed and taken care of, so I decided to treat him to pizza. The pizza place in town made some darn good pizza, so I ordered Stuart a nice large pizza with several toppings all for himself. I also got him two Fanta: Black Currant Sodas, since those were his favorite and what is pizza without soda right?

The workers there got to know me well because I was always there and they thought it was cute that I was bringing Stuart home some pizza. I carefully carried the large pizza box, plastic grocery bags and my purse towards the matatu stop. I hadn’t figured out what to get Mama Rachel and Pasta, but I thought I would give them 9,o00 shillings (roughly 120 bucks) to pay for their electric bill which was overdue. As I walked towards the matatu stop, I was accosted by the flower sellers along the gates. They always wanted me to buy their flowers, but I always refrained before. That day though, I thought maybe flowers would be the thing to get for Mama Rachel as a Thank you. I didn’t think much of her, but she was my hostess and I had to show due respect. I let the flower sellers pull me towards their stands. Unlike many other sellers, the flowers sellers were all women. I felt like they were trying to support their little children with the flower money so I didn’t feel cheated or harassed by dealing with them.  I saw some extraordinarily pretty orangey, pink roses which reminded me of sherbet. I bought those flowers for what I thought was a fair price and left with incredibly full arms.

I made it to the matatus and climbed into the seats right behind the driver, which are the best seats. When the wrangler came near the matatu, he motioned for me to move up to the very front seat, which is the ultimate seat in the van! he felt that with all my gifts and flowers, that it would be best for me to sit up front where there is more room. It always seemed like as soon as I despaired of being treated nicely in Kenya, someone came along and proved that there are still good people in Kenya. Matatu wranglers had been increasingly rude to me and I had acclimated myself to being treated poorly by them, until the nice wrangler offered me a better seat in deference to my beautiful flowers.

It was a long, bumby ride to Sam’s and I had to walk to the school to pick the children up as well. I waited with all my gifts outside the school until the children were let out. I saw Teacher Nora and she joked to me about the flowers being for her. She told me then that only Baby Tyson was leaving at that time, all the other children were being held for extra work. They weren’t being punished, it was just like extra schooling. Unfortuneatly for me, I had counted on the other children helping me get Baby Tyson home, since my hands were literally quite full. I managed to call Stuart from my phone and told him to come help me get Baby Tyson home because I simply couldn’t manage it alone. Baby Tyson, as cute as he was, has a tendency to run off in many directions and won’t come along unless you do some serious coaxing. I tried keeping up with Baby Tyson as best as I could while we made our home to Manaseh. Stuart promised to come down and help me with Baby Tyson ASAP, so I was scanning the horizon looking for his familiar form. As we passed the butcher shops, I spotted Stuart coming down the street. He flung his arms open wide and cried out “Tyson!” It was the first time that Stuart met the children on their way home from school so Baby Tyson was quite excited. They hugged and met me. Stuart was getting excited again because of all the gifts I was bringing home. As we neared the bottom of the hill, Stuart looked at me sheepishly and said “So, I noticed that you are carrying flowers?” He looked all boyish and bashful, almost as if he thought someone had given them to me. I replied “These are for Mama Rachel. I mean hell who would give me flowers?” with a bitter sarcastic edge, as the hurt of the fact that no one would actually give me flowers hit me. Stuart got all excited again, thinking about giving Mama Rachel the flowers.

As we climbed up the hill, Baby Tyson stopped to pee and nearly hit me in the process, which Stuart thought was mildly amusing. Stuart had to slow way down to coax Baby Tyson along, and I had to proceed up the hill with all my bags since the candy was most likely going bad in the heat of the afternoon. I reached Manaseh first and headed upstairs to unpack all of the gifts. Everyone else was still doing the beading, so they were distracted. I made my way up to the room and got Stuart’s present ready for him. Since Robbie, Liz, and Damaris were only getting small candies I didn’t want Stuart to feel like he had to share with them. I wanted Stuart to enjoy every bit of his present since he deserved it, but I knew that his giving personality would compel him to share with everyone else if they knew about it. So I hid his pizza and sodas under a sweater of mine, until he came up the stairs. It actually took him awhile to get Baby Tyson up the hill, but he eventually made it home and past Liz and Robbie. He knocked quietly on the door. “Come in Stuart!” I said quietly. He crept in like a child who is trying to sneak a peek at his Christmas presents. He was sheepish and everything again, because he knew he was getting a present. “You said you have something for me?” he practically squeeked.

I had practiced what I wanted to say to him in my mind so that I would say exactly what I wanted to say. “Stuart, I was being really mean to you last week. I was really frustrated with being sick, being harassed by strange local guys, and having “feminine” problems, as well as having an unexpected visitor.” I raised my voice, in a joking manner to let him know that that particular problem was due in part by him. He looked down at the floor and the smiled back at me like he  was silently saying ”I know, I am sorry.” “I have just been under a lot of stress lately and I took it out on you, and you didn’t deserve it, and I am sorry about that.” Stuart interjected ‘You weren’t that bad! honestly! you don’t have to apologize!” “No, I do have to apologize because you didn’t deserve it.” Stuart was so cute at that moment. He was all sheepish and happy that I was acknowledging that I had been a bitch to him and that he didn’t deserve it. I kind of got the vibe, that not many women have apologized to Stuart for acting like a bitch to him, even though he kindly put up with it all. “So to make up for it, I got you this….” I reached under the sweater and pulled out the pizza box. Stuart became ecstatic. He jumped up a little bit and clapped his hands. “You didn’t have to get me pizza!” Oh but I did. Just so I could have seen that look on his face. He was so happy at that moment and seeing him like that was worth all the money and effort. “Well I also got you this to go with the pizza” I pulled out the Fanta: Black Currant and he got speechlees. He was even happier because I had remembered that Black Currant was his favorite. He held his pizza and soda close and while I told him that he deserved every bit of it and that he should go eat that pizza quick because I didn’t want him to have to share the pizza with anyone else. He scurried off to his room and looked so damned happy.

Later that day, I gave Liz and Robbie their Kinder Buenos. Damaris got her Ferrero Rochers, which produced a squeel of delight. The kids all go their sweets,which they thoroughly enjoyed. Pasta got the money for the electric bill. The only gift that was problematic was Mama Rachel’s flowers. I wanted the small children to give the flowers to her as a gift, since they would love to give a gift, but lacked the capapbility to get a gift. I talked to Stuart about which child should give the flowers and we agreed that Emma should give them. She was older, but she was quiet and sweet. The only children I didn’t want to give the flowers were Rachel and Prudence, becuase they would have used it as another weapon in their private war against the other children. The other problem with giving the flowers was to make sure that the children understood exactly what they were supposed to do. Half the time it seemed that they pretended to understand what I told them, but really they didn’t understand at all. So I enlisted the help of Damaris to explain to the children in Kiswahili what they needed to do. As I explained this to Damaris, Liz overheard our plans. She got all excited too and instantly began formulating ideas for giving the flowers to Mama Rachel. I just wanted the kids to hand the flowers to Mama Rachel and say thank you. Liz started going on and on about hiding the children in a room, luring Mama Rachel somewhere, buzzing each other (briefly calling so that you get a ring, as a sort of signal. common practice in Kenya), and singing songs. Oh my goodness, I had absolutely no idea what this woman was talking about, but she was convincing Damaris to do it. All of a sudden, my simple plan was blown out of the water by Liz and her extravagent plan that made absolutely no sense whatsoever and was completley not what I wanted. It didn’t matter how much I protested or interjected, Liz completely ignored me in her eagerness. Liz and Damaris ran off downstairs to orchestrate this fiasco, while I was left standing there, wondering what the hell happened? Liz completely ignored me again, so she could run a muck and take over a project that she had absolutely no right to.

Somehow, they managed for the children to hide in a room with the flowers, and made the kids sing a thank you song for Mama Rachel. The kids presented Mama Rachel with the flowers. She didn’t seem really happy about it, but what do you expect from a woman who wants diamonds, but only deserves coal? Liz told Mama Rachel that it was my idea, but I interjected and said it was everyone’s idea, because I am not a glory hog or anything and I felt like Liz was intentionally setting me up to be snotty. Grrrrr

It was a long couple of days and so many things changed that weekend. Manaseh got a new visitor, a new volunteer, a holiday weekend, and gifts. I had my bad moods and I was pissed whether rightfully or not, but I will always remember the look on the kids faces when they ate the Twix bars and savored every last little bit. The look on Stuart’s face when I gave him his pizza and soda is burned into my memory forever, because he was so damned happy over what I thought was little stupid thing like pizza.

Defiantly colder this morning compared to yesterday.  The wind was blowing heavy at the top of the moutian.   It was snowing most of the day – Heavy at times making the visibility poor – The light was very flat – in the morning the top of the mountain was very (VERY) icy. Even the groomed runs up top there was a lot of ice.  Stayed bottom have of the mountain most of the morning.

Gun Shot still had some good powder on it (cause it was a little work to get to it) – The powder was heavy and a lot of work – But I’m not 100% if it was because it was thick – or because I is opening weekend for me and I haven’t gotten my ski legs yet.

In the afternoon the flakes got bigger and bigger – I was covered in snow riding up on the lift.  Lightning struck while I was on the lift.  They closed the lift down for 20 minutes – that was enough for me to call it “quits” for the day.   

Tomarrow should have allot of powder – I will be out for first tracks.

Not the best day of skiing (but the best of the weekend so far) –still much better than not skiing today at all.

No new snow since yesterday, more lifts open B – got up a little earlier – woke up and it was 19 degrees. So it took some motivation to get going. Conditions – 18” base Lifts open – 1/9 – Chair 2,3,4,5, and 6. 

Took the giant steps lift only to see a lot of bare spots on the mountain – a good handful of closed runs too. Took a couple of warm up runs down – Hunters Run (groomed Blue Square). The first run down Giant Steps – looked like power but was crusted over. I was break it up a little – until it got too thick and popped off my ski – Had the wrong ski on today (Blizzard Titan Eight – 169 – powder ski). Looking from the Roulette chair – it was very crusty. Stayed on groomed runs Double Night and Bear Paw. 

Gun Shot actually had some powder on it.

Not the best day of skiing (better than yesterday) – but still better then not skiing today at all.

Thanksgiving Day - First Ski Day of the year form me.  Woke up and it was 19 degrees.  So it took some motivation to get going.  It eventually got up to the mid-40s.

Conditions – 18” base

Lifts open – 1/9 – the small Chair #3 (that didn’t help the motivation).

With only the black foot lift open it was took a few run down the Heavenly Daze (Blue Square).

Did a few crossing over to Alpine way and down the bottom portion of Giants Step – un touched but thick and heavy.

Not the best day of skiing – but still better than not skiing today at all.

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Click the newsletter page to the right for invitations to my Holiday Open Studios and ART year in review.

From the lovely Gengen on her Youtube

thank you so much!<3333

sunrise on a winter morn by marilynn z. nielson, 12 x 16 oil on board, unframed  $475, or custom quality framed $650

We awoke one morning to discover the ground covered with a heavy snowfall.  We grabbed the camera and headed some 15 miles from home.  We didn’t know exactly where we were headed, but took a dirt road down a ravine into the river bottoms.  The sun was just coming up as we rounded the bend by a stream and I shouted, “Stop the car.”  This painting was the result of what we saw.   I loved the light on the bank and the weight of snow on the foliage.  Winter scenes are my favorite to paint and this sight was a joy to me.  As we looked to the left we saw another beautiful scene, which will probably be the subject of another painting. ~ marilynn

For those of you that missed this from the Bulls/Jazz game the other night, or if you just want to see it again, here is the video link to the monster alley-oop play between Deron Williams and Ronnie Brewer: Click Here!

Mormons are not Christians.

Let’s all get over that right now. Joseph Smith’s argument was that he was restoring the Church to the way it was supposed to have been all along. Joseph’s claim was that the Church was in total apostasy. Joseph Smith was claiming something unique in the two millennia of Church-State sponsored excommunicationing, confession-torturing, and public stake-burnings that was by then calling itself “Christianity.” Joseph Smith was claiming the whole tradition had departed from its founding principles. Mormons believe that the entire, combined history of today’s Christianity is doctrinally unsound and lacking in authority.

You wouldn’t think so by how hard Mormons now cling to the notion that they’re just another branch of the Christian religion. In their minds of course, they’re actually claiming to be the one, true Christian religion. But then, that’s what everyone else is claiming. We’re right and you guys are all wrong. We have authority and you don’t. I am the Rock, I am Peter. I was founded by Paul. I have 95 reasons why you’re all screwed up so I’m going to reform the Church. Divine Providence has guided us to just these right interpretations of just these right scriptures in just this right version of the Bible and led us to just this right land to prosper, and we’re the only ones who remained true to preserve the true faith.

The thing calling itself Christianity today is not the same as the thing being called Mormonism–even by Mormon standards. Serious problems arise when Mormons start teaching their version of the “gospel,” and lo and behold, the Christian investigator notices it departs wholesale from what they’ve been taught their whole life. Even without the predictable priming of the investigator by their professional Christian clergy or anti-Mormon propagandists, it is inevitable that anyone brought up to believe the conventional Christian storyline will conclude that Mormons are not Christians in the same way everyone else seems to be Christians–and that the Mormons are probably trying to pull a fast one on them. Or they surmise that Mormons are just stupid and don’t know the difference. Which is mostly true in either case.

Since Christians believe they all go to heaven and everyone else goes to hell, the schooled Christian will most of the time just stay safely on the historically Christian side of the debate. Why explore the “fullness” of the gospel, when the gospel you already have is sending you to heaven anyway? For this reason, the Mormon missionary program actually targets those without clear Christian or other religious backgrounds, gives a very broad, generic, rosy sales pitch, begs the hapless, ignorant, spiritually ambivalent investigator to pray about it, and while in some self-induced, emotional, cathartic, faux-religious conversion mode they are challenged, almost dared to jump immediately into the baptismal font. They are urged to just pick up the rest of what they’re going to have to believe after they’re already committed to being a Mormon in principle. It takes the discerning human being of any stripe about five minutes to figure out that this is a buy-now-pay-later religious special-of-the-week sort of marketing program. The investigator rabbits off to the safety of what they already know, or don’t know as the case may be. After all, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

The Mormons designing these recruitment drives and even all the instructional manuals, church magazines and those running the doctrinal curriculum of the Mormon church, don’t know a thing about Christianity, much less how a Christian thinks or feels. They don’t know much about how any normal human being feels, because they’re Mormons. Mormons aren’t only not Christians, they’re just not normal. They are a self-selecting, self-taught closed little sample of one particular (deliberately peculiar) type of human being they’ve self-defined to be God’s particular favorite type of human being. They’ve either been raised to be ignorant of the world at large, or are eagerly cultivated into their contrived peculiarity after being hand-picked by the Mormon recruiting system in which like begets like, ignorance cultures ignorance, and the cultureless beget a complete lack of culture. They become special because they are like everyone else in the club. They are unimpressive as individuals, but absolutely brilliant as herd animals.

Chairman Mao said that sooner or later every revolution goes conservative. He maintained that the communist revolution had to be constantly refreshed and purged of intellectuals and thinkers and anyone who might sit back on their laurels and start thinking about “What’s in if for me then?” Or worse yet, “Hey, isn’t this capitalist thing better than what we’ve got going here after all?” In the 1960’s Mao rallied all the communist youth to fink on their elders, raid and destroy anything not Chinese, anything not communist. Art, music, technology, philosophy, it was all burned if it wasn’t determined to be Chinese or communist enough. Anyone who had the brains or memory or experience to raise an intelligent argument in favor of preserving world knowledge and universal beauty, was sent to a re-education camp. All the intellectuals were sent to the rice paddies. The same sort of thing took place the moment all the bright and eargerly converted Mormon Swedes and Norwegians and English and Danish and Scottish pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley. They stopped being Swedes and Norwegians and English and Danish or Scottish, Catholic, or Protestant, and Brigham Young re-educated them into becoming Mormons.

This is exactly what Lenin did to Marxism in the Soviet Union after the Russian Revolution. The movement began with the cream of the cream of the literati, the intellectuals, the academics, the artists and poets and was led by common, naturally chosen social visionaries. After the revolution however, these people with brains in their heads and ideas of their own just got in the way of the Party doing whatever it wanted to do. Which was take care of the Party. And after all, when you make Yuri the former nut-and-bolt fastener from the local tractor factory the new head of Central Planning Committee, he just doesn’t want to take a lot of crap from smart people and he doesn’t understand why they just don’t do what he says and shut up about it. Yuri got promoted simply because of his undying, if unintelligent loyalty to the Party. The same sort of process works the same way in the recruitment and selection of Mormon leadership as well as the membership in general. It’s not what you know, who you are, what you’re capable of, it’s all about loyalty to the Party. Consequently, anything not immediately relevant to rising in, or surviving under the Party has no place in the culture. All non-Mormon intelligence or ethnicity in Utah was effectively eradicated in one generation.

Before David O. McKay in 1952, the Mormon church was still essentially living out the prophet Joseph Smith’s original commission of bringing good Christians into the “fullness” of the gospel. They had lost any sense of what a Christian is or was by then, but they were still trying to relate to Christians as Mormons, not as fellow Christians. They at least knew the difference back then. Mormons actively sought Christians and started their various missionary efforts with what they already knew Christians found to be troublesome doctrines and principles. Back then Mormons spun off the missionary pitch not into a challenge to baptism, but into how modern revelation had fixed all those problems and restored the whole truth to Christianity. Baptism was a decision, not a bet.

In the early days of the LDS church, it was the primary perspective that every Christian had at one time wondered how it was that their third cousin Huckleberry back in Ohio was going to have to burn in hell when he never done nobody no harm and just never took no shine to the Holy Bible. Every good Christian wondered how the hell you could have a three-headed God that was one God but three different characters at the same time. Every Sunday School Christian had asked the preacher that one question or two that got the “It’s a mystery we accept on faith,” answer that really pissed them off and left them wondering their whole lives if this Christian thing wasn’t just a load of hooey. Well, Joseph Smith gave them better answers. Answers to questions they were already asking.

Today’s LDS recruitment program basically says you can just stuff your questions up your backside, get on your knees and ask in total ignorance if this or that is true. Is the Book of Mormon true? Was Joseph Smith a prophet of God? Don’t make us explain any of it and don’t deviate from the discussion we’ve charted out for you. Go for that burning bosom–avoid any pondering or reasoning. As soon as you’re willing to concede that it might be true, throw yourself straight into that “come to Joseph” moment and it will all explain itself later. (And they wonder why convert retention rates are plummeting…)

Mormons don’t even have any idea how big a leap they’re asking the Christian to take. Christianity is actually fairly compatible with Mormonism just by accident, superficially speaking, looking strictly from the Mormon side of it. Mormons don’t believe Christians are going to be burning in hell for openers. Not officially. It’s a similarly “wholesome” lifestyle. They believe in Jesus Christ. Christians don’t have the whole truth, but they’re mostly harmless and sometimes even good. But most of that would apply to any major world religion from the Mormon perspective. Mormons believe that just about anyone not shedding innocent blood or deliberately and knowingly denying the Holy Ghost is going to a paradise exactly like the “heaven” all little Christian kids are told they’re going to fly up to when they die.

Mormon salvation on that level is free. It’s as free as any salvation you’ll get in any good old Christian tent revival. It’s even freer. All you have to do is accept Christ as your savior, and you don’t even have to do it before you die. If all else fails you can have somebody get baptized for you while you’re up there in a heavenly holding cell, waiting for all the paperwork to get signed and the permits issued. You can die a complete heathen and still be a candidate, yes, even for that highest of high Mormon heavens, the Celestial Kingdom.

The dirty, really really annoying little secret is that Mormons can’t even guarantee that their years of Mormonizing is going to insure them a spot in the highest of high levels in heaven. In the Celestial Kingdom they taunt, the righteous will live an afterlife where they hang out with deity and learn how to make planets, create life and really fun stuff like that. The “gentile” as they call them, the non-Mormon of any faith, will not participate in this higher glory. But obfuscated in a lot of 60’s era cleanup and correlation, is a little caveat about God judging and knowing your heart. All those requirements, those commandments you kept, really don’t weigh much in the Final Judgment or at least aren’t the deal maker or breaker in your ultimate fate.

Celestial glory might also just be the end destination of millions or billions of other former mortals who never had to bother with the whole Mormon experience. There’s still a good chance that Joe Christian or even Joe Jew,  Joe Hindu or Joe Muslim will end up in the Celestial Kingdom along side of the most Mormony of Mormons, or above them, or even a kingdom or two above them. That’s pretty crappy doctrine for recruitment purposes, and certainly for maintaining that sense of superiority and high morale amongst the elect. You can see why historically, Christianity went another way with that.

The Mormon missionary program became a total victim of the Utah ethos in 1959 when president McKay, coming from a teaching background, quite correctly decided that all the reams of freelance apocrypha flying around the various LDS church organizations ought to be correlated into some sort of final orthodoxy. Prior to this movement, every scrap of lecture, every half-reliable journal entry, every rumored quote or sketchy teaching of every prophet, president or LDS leader of any import could ostensibly be preached as official “doctrine.” McKay first cleaned up the missionary training program into what he called a “systematic approach” to teaching the LDS gospel. Harold B. Lee who later also became president of the church was the central figure in this effort and initiated the “Correlation Committee” which since then has maintained absolute authority to sanction or censor any media or organizational program in the church. If it has come out of Correlation, it is “official” Mormon doctrine.

The result of Correlation has been mostly good from an internal standpoint. It purged a century and a half of gibberish and folklore from the burden of what had become an entirely undisciplined and unlimited canon that grew every time some General Authority belched and some other LDS scribbler wrote it down. Externally, it was not so helpful.

Correlation really constitutes the final usurpation of Joseph Smith’s restored Church of Jesus Christ by the “Utah Experience.” Correlation cleaned out everything that Utah didn’t think was relevant—which is all of Christianity for one. Correlation just ignored answering all those difficult early-Mormon and past-prophet-type questions–like blacks and the priesthood, polygamy, or any number of Brigham Young’s musings on Adam being God, or what Brother Brigham had to do with Mountain Meadows. Now, that’s sort of a good thing, because by relegating the bulk of early Mormon zaniness to the purely historical archives, President McKay was trying to sort out what was relevant to the 1950’s Latter-day Saint in a world that kept poking its nose into their happy little valley. At least, he thought, let’s all start singing off the same page instead of defending a pastiche of random thoughts gleaned from a myriad of church leaders over the last century-and-a half.

What Correlation didn’t do, is stop every Tom, Dick, and Bruce R. McConkie from continuing to publish their own versions of Mormonism outside the “official” stream. What Correlation didn’t do, is anything to harmonize, negate or explain 150 or more years of sometimes radically contradictory, and sometimes just radically odd statements and dissertations alleged to have been uttered by major church authorities it was now choosing to ignore. Correlation Movement proponents apparently believed the whole history of frontier Mormon weirdness would erase itself in a generation. Well, it did erase itself, but only from the “official” church structure. Generations of self-illuminated Mormons on the other hand, just kept reading and believing literally anything they latched onto with some Mormon bigwig’s name on it from any era of the church past or present.

Correlation left generations of young and now older Mormons officially ignorant of their own history except for all the happy, logical, inspiring stuff. Generations of Mormons are now entirely unprepared to deal with Christians and other normal human beings, who frankly, are only interested in getting some sort of answer to the juicy, weird stuff first. When an investigator hears that you claim to be a Mormon but you can’t spit something half-intelligent out about polygamy, they just don’t care to be “challenged” to baptism. They think you’re a sham, or an imbecile. Or, more pointedly, you’ve been brainwashed and kept from the “secret truths” of Mormonism. They don’t trust you and don’t care to listen to you any farther.

Correlation did to Mormon historical and doctrinal truth the same thing Prohibition did for alcohol; it just made all those “unofficial” sources all that much more appealing. When the good stuff right from the Maker dried up, even the faithful went rushing straight to the bootleg Mormon gospel writers, as those historically troubling Mormonological questions just kept rising to the surface generation by generation.

Correlation unfortunately also dragged the meaning of seeking “guidance by the Spirit” down to the level of merely reading something the Committee wrote in a manual somewhere and making you pray hard enough till you believe it’s true. The only input the Spirit gets in all this “guidance” is to swoop down at the end of the lesson and put His stamp of approval on the Correlation Committee’s work. That’s “official” Mormonism today. McKay’s systematic missionary program called it the “Commitment Pattern.” Read a blurb carefully crafted by ad men at church headquarters, challenge the investigator to pray and confirm, then elicit an immediate commitment to live it. The whole pondering and studying thing is obsolete. You want your prospect or “mark” to go with his gut impulse on first blush while he’s emotionally receptive. Never give a mark the option of thinking it over calmly. This tactic is not surprising, since Harold B. Lee was an advertising man and chaired the whole Correlation movement when all these new PR and educational programs were first developed.

The first version of Correlation’s missionary program used flip charts and a door-to-door marketing script along Madison Avenue lines. The present system, while claiming to be a reaction to people eventually getting wise to the canned, fake, hard-sell McKay/Lee era system, is actually just the old system without the locked script. The new missionary approach uses exactly the same formula, and only pretends to fulfill the “teaching by the Spirit” scriptural requirement of the LDS missionary commission. It breaks the discussions into particular concepts, drills the missionary till he can “ad-lib” a lesson that teaches exactly the concept charted out for him or her in his or her “own words.” Then you still dare them to get dunked. No variation, no answers to hard questions. If they’re ready, they’ll go into the font anyway, if not, move forward into the next pitch in the program till you close the sale.

From the Mormon perspective then, one Christian church is about as good as any other. It’s not worth studying.  They aren’t trying to convert . Conversion is a long-lost concept. Mormon missionary efforts are based entirely upon trying to hunt and coax out people who are already “prepared” to believe the Mormon narrative regardless of logic, reason, history, tradition or culture. They’ve got a program, a method. It works for them a lot of the time. It’s an almost entirely emotional appeal which you can choose to call “spiritual” if you want to. I suppose if the prospect stays in the church after baptism, it was spiritual. If they wake up a month later and can’t believe what they got themselves into, it was mostly emotional.

The Mormon missionary who tangles with an actual thinker might just as well hoof it to the next door. That chump had their chance. They’ll just have to make do with unimaginable glory, instead of really, really, really unimaginable glory. There is no inescapable suffering in Mormon theology when a missionary fails to score a baptism, not in the long run. (Except for the mission statistics and the missionary’s performance rating, which may be a pretty central issue to most missionaries and mission presidents.)

But Christians will never concede that Mormons are going anywhere but hell. Trying to steal the Christian label from them is going to be fighting words until Jesus returns to pick a side in the debate Himself. And even then they’re going to demand He prove with miracles and firey chariots that He’s really Jesus. The whole Christian belief system collapses if Mormons don’t burn in hell. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is two-thousand years too late to try to claim the Christian brand from them. They have it patented, registered, and trademarked and they will fiercely protect it. And every Christian tradition from the Holy Roman Empire to some little evangelical offshoot on your cable TV public access channel has a belief system that on one level or another, sends everyone, even other Christians, to hell or puts them in danger of hell because they’ve got it all wrong. Or even just this one little part of it wrong. Two thousand years of ecumenical conferences and attempts to nail down general agreements on who really is a true Christian or not, and they’ve only agreed to disagree. They do however agree unanimously that Mormons are not part of the debate. Mormons have crossed the line. And why not? That’s exactly what Joseph Smith said about them.

I even wonder sometimes why the Christian brand name is so worth fighting for. It’s just a passing title use once in one minor scripture. And what they’ve done with it over the last two-thousand years isn’t always a thing to praise and respect.

To be correct, I’d also have to say that a lot of Mormons aren’t really even Latter-day Saints. A lot of Mormons believe in UFOs. Some of them will insist it’s in the four standard works if you know where to look. By the book, their book, a lot of apocryphal, anecdotal, pioneer, journal-of-rumors nonsense should have long ago been cleanly parsed out of the main LDS devotional collection of half-baked fables. Because of their ongoing reluctance to rate or denounce one-another, LDS leaders have allowed so much prophetic political leeway that virtually anything said or written by anyone of any authority or position in the Mormon church over the last two hundred years could be credibly argued to be the word of the Lord. For the last fifty years or so all the really goofy Mormon doctrines may have been cleaned out of the official, Correlated belief system—yet they really haven’t been cleaned out of the chain of theoretical authority. These quacky old doctrines have yet to be justified or denied by current leadership. You can take it out of the Sunday School lesson in 1952, but Pastor Bob, the rabid Anti-Mormon of today still has a copy of it and your old Mormon granny still believes in it because that’s what she was taught in Sunday School in 1951. Granny and those zany old codgers in high priest groups down in Payson still pass it all on to their descendants as God’s own truth because the current prophet and the current prophet after that continue to fail to proclaim clearly and authoritatively what Mormon’s don’t believe in.

Unlike Mormonism, Christian sects have only ever had but a handful of convoluted little central doctrines to debate in total. They still killed and excommunicated each other over them for thousands of years, but compared to the volumes of half-thought-out Mormon doctrinal speculations available to the Mormon, Christians have a very simple gospel to bicker about. Mormonism has had to date, less than two centuries to narrow down what it’s going to be all about. It lost its defining prophet very early on in the process, got chased into the wilderness, and has spent most of its time struggling with inbred family feuding, caretaking and nation-building. The Mormon church is full of “authorities.” They all write, and they all have opinions on everything. Mormons simply haven’t had the time, insight or interest to go through the bulk of every little note ever scribbled down and attributed to some prophet or apostle or the other and clean out all the rubbish. It hasn’t been a problem in the Valley till now.

Mormons are extremely ignorant in religious matters overall. Even their own. Make that ignorant in most things cultural, religious, or intellectual. Have I driven that point home yet? Mormons are not chosen because they have unique talents and wisdom. They’re chosen because they agree to get baptized.

Mormons know Mormonism and that’s it. That’s it. That’s what Mormons do: be Mormons. All they know is that hiding out for two centuries in a dusty valley in Utah is the most important human experience in the history of mankind. They claim to have a “Style all our Own” as they were fond of boasting in brow-flogging lectures to their youth, haranguing long hair and beards in the late 60’s and 70’s. But it isn’t a style so much as a lack of style. Mormons have a lack of style all their own. They are overtly attempting to make themselves a peculiar people, but not always in a good way. The style-less, the boring, the intellectually and artistically complacent, the anti-intellectual, they all make great Mormons. They are good, honest, God-fearing folk. They’re just unremarkable as hell. And they have a way of taking a great, even inspired religion and boring it to death. Like begets like and in the closed Mormon system, the pig-ignorant are teaching the pig-ignorant how to find and sign up more of the pig-ignorant. Even if we concede that God provides the Mormon church president with a brilliant idea, the Correlation Movement for example, it’s still going to be executed by a bunch of uncommonly dull and unusually sheltered Utah Mormons.

In a famous interview with the New Yorker January 2002, church president Gordon B. Hinckley speaks to Lawrence Wright:

“I’m the third generation in this Church,” he told me. “My grandfather joined the Church in his late teens in Nauvoo.” Nauvoo, Illinois, was a refuge that the Mormons created in 1839, following an order by the governor of Missouri to run them out of the state. But Illinois soon proved to be worse than Missouri. In 1844, after an anti-Mormon mob murdered Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum, the Mormons headed west. Hinckley’s grandfather Ira was among them. Thousands died on the trek across the Great Plains, including Ira’s wife and his stepbrother, Joel, who both died of cholera on the same day in 1850.

Hinckley showed me a small bronze figure of a pioneer standing beside a grave. “Here’s a little statue somebody made of that event, portraying my grandfather’s burial of his wife in a coffin he made somewhere, we know not where. And afterward he picked up his eleven-month-old daughter and carried her to this valley.” Hinckley’s voice grew thick. “Now, that’s my background in this Church, and it’s real, and it’s pragmatic, and it’s Mormonism.”

In the Mormon scheme, every person is a potential divinity. The adage “As man now is, God once was; as God now is, man may be” expresses the Mormon belief that God was once a human being, with a wife and children. But Hinckley did not seem interested in discussing matters of theology. When I asked him to characterize God’s connubial relationship, he replied, “We don’t speculate on that a lot. Brigham Young said if you went to Heaven and saw God it would be Adam and Eve. I don’t know what he meant by that.” Pointing to a grim-faced portrait of the Lion of the Lord, as Young was called, he said, “There he is, right there. I’m not going to worry about what he said about those things.”

I asked whether Mormon theology was a form of polytheism.

”I don’t have the remotest idea what you mean,” he said impatiently.

”More than one god.”

”Yes, but that’s a very loose term,” he replied. “We believe in eternal progression.” By that he meant that human beings can evolve toward godhood by following the Mormon path. “You want to be a reporter always?” he said. “You want to be a scrub forever, through all eternity? We believe that life, eternal life, is real, that it’s purposeful, that it has meaning, that it can be realized. I wouldn’t describe us as polytheistic.”

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2002/01/21/020121fa_FACT1?currentPage=3#ixzz0Y2nzgJ07
- Hinckley Interview in “Lives of the Saint”, New Yorker, January 2002  

What’s telling about this interview, is that it was President Hinckley’s idea. It was one of the main showcases of Mormonism in his movement to bring the church out of the Wasatch Front and into the position of a respected, major world religion. His several interviews and media appearances were greeted by the faithful as warm and charming and wonderful for the church. Yes, he came off as a harmless, kindly old grandfather who would never slit your throat in your sleep and probably wasn’t a polygamist pedophile—a nice well-meaning old guy who apparently doesn’t really worship the devil after all. If that’s all the church was hoping for: mission accomplished—till the next outbreak of crazed polygamy in Texas.

At some point, certainly after that interview, somebody in the Mormon establishment might have thought to coach him on how to answer very basic questions he knew were going to keep coming up. The question of monotheism and polytheism relative to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost was fought out for the first three or four centuries of the Christian Church. It’s Christianity 101, a freshman question. It’s not an elite question to be asking a man who claims to be the sole representative of all three here on earth. The only two answers to basic questions like these that President Hinckley ever developed during the whole campaign were, “That was then, this is now,” and “We’re beyond that now.” What does that mean? Does that mean, yes, our prophets have been hoodwinking you up to now but it won’t happen again? Those are just lame non-answers a nice old duffer gets away with because nobody wants to be seen as beating him up.

Yeah, in Mormon church president Hinckley’s 2002 media blitz the world saw perhaps the church as a whole to be harmless and perfectly willing to forget all about troubling questions of the past. Even if the past was only 1978. But the world gave President Hinckley and his church a pass only in the context of chuckling along with a simple, provincial old Utah hick who knew nothing about Christianity and even less about the church he claimed to be the prophet, seer and revelator of.

Any Mormon prophet with millions of church members around the world believing him to have a direct pipeline to God could not at some point avoid asking for a bit of advice on the whole Adam-God issue from the Divine Creator he claims to be chief witness of. Yes or no. It’s a simple question. Was Brigham Young misquoted or wrong, or is Adam in fact God? Yes or no. To say it doesn’t matter is disingenuous. It matters to every member of the church what every prophet says. The Brethren keep telling them every prophet speaks in “modern scripture.” The whole point of modern prophecy is to get answers. The true nature of God matters. Joseph Smith wrote whole books on answers to questions just like that. So did Joseph F. Smith and Joseph Fielding Smith and others before the Correlation era.

Anyone  claiming to be spokesman for Jesus Christ ought to be able to say definitively whether or not he’s really speaking for Adam instead.  Couldn’t any LDS church president easily call a big council on the matter and finally come out and say, for instance, that no, we carefully studied the subject and decided that Adam is not God and we don’t care what Brigham Young may or may not have meant about it? It is oxymoronic for a prophet seer and revelator to say, “I don’t know” on any matter of church doctrine.

That’s his whole job—to get answers. That’s the whole Mormon church. Getting answers from God through a living prophet.

So either this prophet, seer and revelator thing today works rather differently than the way Mormons imagine it to work, or the whole thing’s a bluff. The Mormon prophet either sits down with Jesus every morning and can ask anything about anything and answer any question with absolute, perfect knowledge and authority, or if not, the Mormon prophet and church president at least most of the time, is subject to the normal standards of personal revelation like everyone else. The problem with answering this question officially, is that it would have to come from the very prophets, seers, and revelators it applies to. They would either be ranking previous prophets as errant, or admitting they aren’t inspired enough to know what the heck their predecessors were rambling on about. They would be self-diminishing their own omniscience and that of every LDS General Authority before them and forever after. An LDS prophet would become a far less infallible leader in the eyes of the faithful masses. It’s sort of like expecting Congress to vote for their own pay cut.

Does the Mormon prophet talk directly, regularly, face-to-face with Jesus Christ as it is widely held? The Brethren have coyly allowed this assumption to go unchallenged. Until recently it was quite popular for General Authorities to make frequent, vague, public allusions supporting this notion. Or does the reigning Mormon prophet have to make do for the most part with listening for quiet promptings from that still, small voice, after a lot of study, prayer, and pondering? Does it then really just come down to being informed, educated, and discerning enough to know what questions to ask–or at least know that questions need to be asked?

It’s one thing to say: I’m a simple representative of the third-generation of a young church and my entire world view, my entire religious experience is of my family and people getting kicked around and hiding in a dustbowl. Consequently, I see Mormonism as a very common, unsophisticated and pragmatic religion. But it’s stretching that excuse beyond all sense and reason to call yourself a “prophet” and then admit you really don’t know much about your own doctrines past or present when you’re the guy directly in charge of defining present doctrine and interpreting past doctrine.

For the highest Mormon leadership to dismiss early Christian history as unimportant is perhaps forgivable. It is myopic but perhaps it’s just laziness or a shortcut to getting their point across, which is, Christian history is all wrong anyway. For Mormon church leadership to pretend however that they can’t say for sure what present Mormonism is all about is just silly. If you’re the prophet, the president of the church, it’s about whatever you say it’s about.

Mormons are not Christians. But the sad truth is, today’s Mormons are also no longer Mormons in the same sense that Joseph Smith was a Mormon—or even in the same sense that the pioneers who followed Brigham Young to the Salt Lake Valley were Mormons. They are not led by prophets who function in the same capacity or at least to the forthcoming degree that Joseph Smith functioned as a prophet. Joseph Smith’s Mormonism was a young, innovative, radically liberal frontier rebellion from the well-understood world-Christian status quo. Contemporary Mormonism by contrast is a collection of committees populated with elderly Utahans who grew up isolated in a comfortably settled, exclusively Mormon paradise along the Wasatch Front courtesy of Brigham Young and company. The modern Mormon church is now apparently longing to simply fit back  into the world Christian tradition somehow. Lacking any major personal vision, bereft of any personal history of life-and-death physical and spiritual heroism, they have fallen into a worship of the ancestors who provided them with their comfortable little society through bygone years of work, study, hardship, suffering, and an undying faith in God. But they can only emulate them in a romanticised, revisionsist glory, because it is no longer within their realm of understanding to know what made them tick deep inside.

Joseph Smith brought Mormonism into the world kicking butt and taking names. Now Mormonism just wants to be accepted. Now Mormonism just wants a hug. Joseph Smith rejected all of orthodox Christianity almost two-hundred years ago as of this writing. His followers have been licking wounds, quarreling with the Christian dominated US government and chasing their own theological tails pointlessly around in circles in a big dirty rift out in Utah ever since he was murdered.

Today, Joseph Smith’s legacy just wants a comfy chair, some peace and quiet, and a nice long nap. They’re not looking for the best and the brightest. They’re not looking for an improved understanding of God and His wonderous universe. They don’t want pioneers or religious revolutionaries. They’re just looking for people who do what they’re told, don’t dress scruffily, don’t smoke, drink, take coffee or tea, play nicely with others, and won’t make trouble. That’s Mormonism to them now.

I guess Mao was right.

Enjoy these photos that I just snapped on Temple Square. The light display was turned on tonight and will be on throughout the holiday season. The lights are turned on at dusk and turned off at 10 p.m. on Temple Square and 10:30 p.m. on the areas surrounding the square. The light display ends on New Year’s Eve.

Muchos residentes de Utah se reúnen a compartir un alimento y dar gracias en este día especial. Entre ellos encontramos a una familia celebrando su primer Día de Acción de Gracias en América.

El pavo fue parte de su alimento en este día especial, pero Raghad Safah también incluyó otros platos de arroz y de cordero. Aunque el menú refleja sus tradiciones Iraquíes, la importancia de este día de fiesta americano resuena grandemente en la familia Safah.

Safah dijo, “Y estoy agradecida por mis niños y mi esposo, por supuesto. Estamos agradecidos por la salud y agradecidos por America, de hecho, por que estamos aquí.¨ Ellos escaparon de la guerra religiosa violenta de Iraq y pasaron tres años como refugiados en Siria.

“Cuando llegué a Siria, sentí un gran alivio y todas las preocupaciones sobre mi esposo y mis hijos desaparecieron, pero aquí estamos mucho mejor que en Siria,” dijo ella.

La familia Safah llegó en Junio a Utah y con la ayuda de la comunidad católica se establecieron aquí. Ahora la familia está tratando de empezar una nueva vida. Raghad está asistiendo al Community College mientras su esposo trabaja para mantener a la familia.

“Todo es una sorpresa para nosotros aquí, pues todo es completamente diferente a Iraq o Siria,” dijo ella. Ella nos cuenta que los niños rápidamente se acostumbraron a las hamburguesas y al bus de la escuela.

Fuente: KSL News

Utah Lake dominates Utah Valley in north-central Utah, with major cities such as Provo and Orem hemmed between the lake’s eastern shore and the Wasatch Mountains. West of the lake are the Lake Mountains and jutting into the south portion of the lake is West Mountain, which divides Goshen Bay and Lincoln Beach. Connected to the main body of the lake are two large, shallow bays: the aforementioned Goshen Bay to the south and Provo Bay to the east, where Hobble Creek enters the lake.

Despite its large surface area, the lake is shallow; it has a maximum depth of 18 feet (4.27 m) and an average depth of about 9.4 feet (2.74 m). This shallowness allows winds to easily stir up sediments from the lake’s bottom, contributing to the turbidity seen in Utah Lake’s water.

Major tributaries include the Provo River, Spanish Fork, and American Fork rivers, as well as Hobble, Mill Race, and Currant creeks. Additionally, there are many hot springs and smaller creeks flowing into the lake. Utah Lake is drained by the Jordan River, which begins at the lake’s north end, where a pumping station has been created to regulate its flow. It then flows north through Utah and Salt Lake counties into the southeast portion of Great Salt Lake.

Ooh, we’re comin’ up on one of my favorite places in America: Yellowstone!!

Chapter 16 for your reading pleasure.

The vids are from SnarkyMawg! Thanks to them!  (  24.11.09 )

Waiting For Yesterday

I can’t imagine a more beautiful place to experience autumn than the national parks of Utah and Arizona. Zion, Bryce Canyon, Arches and Grand Canyon National Parks, to be exact. Sure the days are shorter, but sun’s low angle creates dynamic contrasts and shadows on the rocks and cliffs all day long. We can’t wait to visit these places again. In the meantime, we have this video along with our zillions of photos to remind us of our fantastic time. Hope you enjoy!