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mormonmonastery · 4 years ago

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(Venting anon. TW for mentions of homophobic violence as well) I just… I haven’t been active for more than a couple weeks at a time for four years now, and I wasn’t expecting to be hit this hard. But it really hurts! The gun imagery hurts when last weekend a lesbian couple were shot and killed in Moab! For the first time in ages today I walked around in public feeling like someone was going to see the gay on me and shout me down for it. The more things like this happen, the more I want to just sever myself from the whole thing. I don’t observe any of the rules anymore, and I have no clue what I think about God, aside from feeling like His chosen left me behind. But I don’t quite have the nerve to properly get my name removed. Plus new roommates moved in for the new school year and I have no idea how they’ll be about me being gay, so I’ve been avoiding being home all day because I keep tearing up over it and AHHH 😭

I feel a deep sympathy for how you're feeling, despite not really being able to imagine just how awful it feels to be attacked like this. I'm sorry that you're stuck feeling this stress and that one man's cruel and irresponsible language still impacts you even after you've taken some steps back from the church for your own comfort, health, and safety. That's really the important response. All that follows are reactions that your message sparked in me and which you can take and leave as you see fit.

I'm hoping that, because it was an address only delivered to BYU faculty instead of something like a conference talk or a devotional, that this will end up being a relatively small ripple in the discourse pond for most average Mormons; that at most they'll hear a few rumblings about it before moving on and that we won't see it pointed to as a justification for more hate or violence. I don't know how well that hope is placed. And even if its harm is confined to BYU...that's still a large population of people placed at greater risk. Even what you tell me already about feeling less safe just existing in public is enough to damn anyone who prompted that fear while claiming to speak in the name of God.

I believe what the New Testament writer said when they wrote that God has not given us a spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7). Because of that, I don't think anyone who use their power to create fear is speaking with any of God's spirit in them for as long as they persist in fearmongering and the perpetuation of hatreds. I believe that if there is a time when Elder Holland stands before Christ at the judgement day, he'll have to understand and accept responsibility for the exact fear his words caused you to feel and for the miscarriage of his stewardship in saying them. I don't usually like so baldly saying that God will prove someone else wrong; it's a card that's usually best left unplayed and I think it a mean thing to make God into your cudgel. But, frankly, I would not want anything to do with a God who would not outright condemn this kind of speech, who would stoop to the small and petty level that endorsing it would mean. I choose not to believe in any God like that because they have no continuity with the God I have encountered; if such a cruel God somehow turns out to exist, I would rather walk backwards into hell.

It strikes me as grievously irresponsible to reprise Neal Maxwell's whole "musket and trowel" metaphor to compare continuing to persecute LGBT+ people with a historic instance of Mormon persecution, particularly when DezNat is a thing that exists. I honestly don't know how intentional that was, but I also think that if Holland was intending to wink at DezNat he couldn't have found a quote that would be better at achieving that if he tried. I'm sick and weary of even metaphorical violence and I long for the prince of peace. I don't know anything about the couple shot in Moab, but it does indicate the preponderance of violence in our society and the persistence of violence against queer people specifically—which makes telling people to aim their metaphorical muskets at anyone a rhetorical flourish that is distasteful at best and even worse in this context.

I agree with the Latin American liberation theologians that, while God loves all of their children unconditionally, they have a "preferential option" for the poor (literally and in spirit) and the marginalized. I believe you're God's chosen at least as much, and quite arguably more than, any church leader, so long as you wish to claim God's preference or believe a God exists in that way.

It is sad to feel left behind by church leaders but, at least for me, the larger sensation is this sadness from the other direction. It's sad to realize that a man like Jeffrey Holland, who I have received inspiration and comfort from hearing in the past and who I feel like God has been able to use as a messenger for me at times—it's simply sad to see him refuse to move past an attitude and set of beliefs that I can see as so clearly unchristlike and to mistake them for a unique and essential aspect of Christ's gospel. I want to have charity for my brothers and sisters who I see as being stuck there but it's hard—I feel overwhelmingly sad and frustrated and impatient and remorseful about them and it is hard to alchemize those feelings into charity. It's sad for me to feel like, if I'm to continue to grow spiritually and ethically, I might very well have to leave behind this person whose words have at times been an aid to my own spiritual growth. I think that's why my reaction and the reaction of others has been to feel a little more hurt and a little more betrayed than whenever the general authorities who are more frequent purveyors of homophobia deliver this kind of talk—they rarely gave up that kind of talk long enough to inspire me. Of course I knew or intuited on an intellectual level that Holland wasn't significantly better or more enlightened on these issues, but it feels different to see it displayed publicly like this. And it's sad to me to see people I like and respected on the other side what seems to be an ever-widening and impassable gulf in how we understand who the God that has revealed themselves to us is and what their character is like. I cannot believe that God could bring about or observe a situation in which two people were capable of sincere, consensual, and committed love for each other and then condemn them for living in that love and promise to erase their capacity for that love in the resurrection. Apparently, Jeffery Holland can believe that and believe it quite strongly. It's sad for me to realize that about him and about so many other people in the church like him.

#as you can see. this is also my own vent.

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virtuissimo · 6 years ago

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Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse (Review)

Roanhorse has effectively cemented herself as a visionary in indigenous futurism with her rich world-building, her casual commentary on the powers that be, and even her dynamic and lovable characters, but I think it’s perfectly clear that this is her debut novel. She definitely gets lost in the sauce plot-wise towards the end, and there are several points where the potential for improvement is obvious. Nonetheless, she’s got me rearing for the next book already, and I will definitely be following this series.

This is the kind of book where I really think you can get the most out of it if you go in blind with very little prior knowledge of the book, and it really is a good one. I encourage yall to give it a go. If you don’t care about getting a little more detail, I’ll go into a spoiler free section.

No Spoilers

Okay, first thing I’ve gotta talk about is the setting. First off, it’s AWESOME. The setting is about 6? 7? years after an apocalypse. The explanation for it is really organic and it informs a lot of how the book proceeds.

Idk if this counts as a spoiler so it’s in its own paragraph, but basically the apocalypse was a series of natural disasters around the world plus a major flood that drowned out most of the continental U.S. except for a few walled off city states. The walls are specifically and emphatically NOT the ones that the Trump administration is gunning for—Roanhorse dismisses that quite quickly. These walls were ones that local communities decided to put up, and they are made of beautiful materials that have cultural significance for the Dine.

My favorite thing about the setting is the societal organization. Dinetah is a really interesting place because of the ubiquity of Dine people & culture, but also because Roanhorse obviously has a lot of really interesting thing to say about what apocalypse means to a people that have already had their apocalypse. They already had foreign invasion and genocide, they already had their numbers chipped away to a shadow of its former size, they already had their land destroyed beyond recognition. So what does it mean when in apocalypse destroys the society that destroyed yours? I think Roanhorse’s answer is that it did more good for the Dine than bad. They are freer and safer in an apocalypse, even DESPITE the presence of monsters everywhere.

One thing I really liked about her approach to Dinetah was the use of language. To quote a journal entry I wrote about this book: “Roanhorse makes creative use of Dine words and language. There is no glossary, and sometimes there isn’t even an in-text translation. English speakers are forced to pick up Dine words with no life preserver just as so many non-English speakers are forced to do the same in our world.” Most of the concepts, like clan powers and ghosts and monsters, have a Dine word attached to them, and you learn to recognize them as you read. She doesn’t remind you of their definition either: you either paid attention the first time it came up or you’re screwed! It was just an interesting stylistic choice, and I enjoyed the experience.

Another note about the setting that I love: I LOOOVE the references to the other citystates. I think one was New Detroit? New Denver? And there was a Mormon citystate (when I read that I screamed) and there was one called Aztlan (!!!!!) which was very exciting for me. I have complicated feelings about Aztlan because I think most people who live in this post-apocalyptic citystate would probably not be indigenous Mexicans but rather americanized mestizo Chicanos who think they have an inherent claim to the land just because they colonized it first, but I think as an indigenous author I can trust her to develop a nuanced view of Aztlan and what that means for Mexican Americans (especially consider the fact that she had several sensitivity readers mentioned in her acknowledgements). I really hope we get a chance to explore those in future books.

Oh, also: there are no white people in this book. Like, none. They reference them in vague terms, but I don’t think there was a location or scene that had a white person even in the background, and there were certainly no speaking parts for white people in this book. So basically I loved that. I do that often in my own writing but it’s so rare in mainstream fiction. There is a family that is not Dine in the book, but they are a large black family. With regards to the writing of the black characters: I noticed that her physical descriptions of them sometimes had words that I’ve seen on lists of What Not To Say About Black Characters (comparing skin color to food, particular words used to describe hair, etc.), but I flipped to the author bio and she apparently is black as well as indigenous so I guess my concerns weren’t really relevant lol. One of these characters is also gay, and I thought his characterization was a little bit weird, but it’s fine I guess.

Now I haven’t seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but I’ve read a spinoff from the same universe and have heard enough about it to see the obvious inspiration that Roanhorse took from it. This is not necessarily a bad thing, of course; Buffy has a very particular energy where it’s fantastically easy to get invested. Maggie Hoskie as a hero is easy to love, and even as someone who doesn’t typically like lengthy action sequences, I found the fighting scenes thrilling. However, at the same time Roanhorse commits some of the same mistakes in writing her female protagonist that Joss Whedon so famously introduced into the mainstream, and there are a few times where it becomes difficult not to roll your eyes.

As I’ve seen other reviewers note, Maggie as a character is very reliant on the men in her life. She describes early on how her life was saved by Niezghani, an immortal godlike monster slayer, and his presence in her thoughts influences nearly every decision she makes throughout the novel. Some people have a problem with this; I personally think this is a fine set-up. The author takes great care to show how unhealthy her relationship with Niezghani is. Even when Maggie is talking about how great and powerful he is, how she should be grateful that he even gives her the time of day, we as a reader can tell something is very wrong with their relationship from the very beginning. I don’t really like the direction Roanhorse went with Niezghani (I’ll get into that in the spoilers section I guess), but I thought this relationship as a premise was fine.

I think where she slipped up a little was in putting her relationship with Kai, a mysterious and charming medicine man who helps her on her investigation/quest/whatever, as the center of the story. I guess technically we’re not certain about this since the whole series isn’t out yet, but I think it’s safe to assume this guy is endgame. The whole first half of the book is spent getting to know Kai, which I think is fine because he is a great character and truly charming. (I’m always suspicious of “”charming”” type characters because more often than not the author makes them annoying and presumptuous.) He actually seems to care about the things that are happening, he doesn’t make assumptions, he understands boundaries, and his kindness is genuine. I like Kai, okay, he’s great. BUT I think that spending so much time with him instead of ruminating with Maggie some more was a mistake.

I can understand WHY roanhorse did this: Maggie is someone who is very wrapped up in her thoughts, and 9 times out of 10 her thoughts are really fuckin depressing. I just think that a lot of time was spent characterizing Kai when it could have been done in less time and more efficiently.

The main thing about Kai is that his skills as a medicine man are very mysterious, and Maggie becomes curious very early on about the nature of his abilities. The answer to her questions, though, aren’t given until very very late in the book. In fact, we don’t understand everything about his medicine man secrets until like 10 pages from the end. I think this is way too late. First off, we don’t get to see him in action very much, and the way things go I really wish we had. Second, Roanhorse just wastes a lot of time in the beginning and crams a whole lot in the end. From a world-building perspective these sections are really cool and fascinating, but plot-wise it’s extremely inefficient that we learn about Kai in bits and pieces like this, especially since all of his secrets kind of come out one after the other all crowded at the end. I don’t know if she got the right balance in that tradeoff.

Another critique I’ve seen people have is that all of Maggie’s problems AS WELL AS the solutions to her problems revolve around the men in her life. I did think it was strange that Maggie was essentially the only major female character in the whole book. There was Rissa, but she was a minor character and didn’t have much agency in the plot. I would say that Maggie did have agency, and the way she carries herself both in conversation and in action both suggest that she is making her own decisions independent of male influence. I see where these critiques are coming from, though, and I agree that more of her story should have been herself rather than obsessing over these men.

Minor spoilers I guess: One scene that I think most socially conscious people rolled their eyes at was the decision to create a plot point where she had to get all dolled up in a sexy outfit because Reasons. And then people had that weird Oh My God So Hot moment that we are all so fond of (/s). Annoying tropes like that rear their ugly faces from time to time, but this is the only one that really irritated me.

Yea. I mean. It’s a good book. I think yall should read it. As I’ve said, the worldbuilding and setting is awesome, the characters are super cool, the action is cool and Actually let’s just get into the spoilers.

SPOILERS

Coyote was one of my favorite characters. I think Roanhorse may have wanted him to be a morally gray could-be-either-side type of character, but I really saw him as a straight up villain just because he never actually did help them in a way that didn’t backfire. I love reading him though; the sheer chaos that he brings to every scene really appealed to my gayer side. I don’t know if this is an aspect to him that is commonly seen in folktales or something, but I did think that he was a little over the top creepy about the sex stuff though. When he said that shit about Maggie jacking off to Niezghani I was just…ok he’s crossin some Lines here. Also he was constantly making Kai and Maggie uncomfortable sexually, so I don’t really get why they were always so willing to trust him. Still, he was SO interesting. Whenever he showed up I was instantly enthralled.

One thing that got on my nerves a little was that from the very beginning, it was very clear that Kai and Maggie being endgame is a given. Don’t get me wrong, Roanhorse put in the work to make them seem like a really organic and natural couple. And I guess it’s kind of respectable that she didn’t try to pretend like it wasn’t gonna happen, cuz we all knew. But I think it was a little annoying that EVERYONE, including Tah and Longarm and Grace and Coyote and Kai and EVEN MAGGIE at times were basically of the attitude that they were just biding time until they eventually hook up one day. She really didn’t have to do all that; I liked them as a couple already!

Okay but plot-wise, I have to say this, but Roanhorse REALLY got lost in the sauce there. The final battles were so complicated, and there were actually 3 different scenes that felt like they could be the final battle but then there was more (the battle where Rissa got gutted, the Niezghani versus Maggie fight, and the Black Mesa battle). I feel like she couldn’t decide on a conclusion for book one and just threw all that in there for good measure. In any case, it made the last third of the book really messy and unfocused.

I think she also had too many Reveals. Like, Niezghani revealed Kai’s identity, Kai reveals his true intentions, Coyote reveals his plan, Maggie reveals her counter-plan, and Coyote reveals the circumstances of her nali’s death. TOO MUCH. It was all so cloudy and confusing towards the end, especially with regards to Coyote’s plan. First of all, I didn’t really understand what his plan was on first read, and I ESPECIALLY didn’t understand why he took the time to explain it to her. Second off, I didn’t understand Maggie’s counterplan (I don’t think it’s explained in too many words?) and I ESPECIALLY didn’t understand how they planned to have Kai survive. (Now that I’ve had time to think about it I suppose it’s related to his fast healing situation probably, and they just decided to murk him and see if he was actually immortal or whatever the fuck.) Also Kai and Maggie had that whole conversation about their love life right in front of Niezghani………messy as fuck and also is this really the time?????

One thing I really liked about the beginning of the book was that Maggie was such an unreliable narrator when it came to Niezghani. Like, it was pretty obvious that he’s garbage from the beginning, but Maggie just idolizes this man and you have to like scream into the book WHYY??? But the only way that she’s able to idolize him that way is that he presents himself as a mentor, as an authority, and maybe not so much as a caring figure as much as someone to look up to. He is, if nothing else, RESPECTABLE. But when he finally shows up in the Maggie v Niezghani fight, he is not respectable. He is overtly cruel in a way everyone, including Maggie, can see. He is overtly manipulative. He is overtly uncaring and honestly terrible. But this portrayal of him is SO MUCH LESS NUANCED than it was at the beginning of the book. I wish Roanhorse had had the guts to make him more complicated. To make him ACT apologetic or ACT like a mentor, but to make him a hypocrite. That, to me, would have been much more interesting. I understand that trauma informed a big part of the reason Maggie trusted him in the first place, but I wanted to meet the smooth and enchanting man that Maggie fell in love with but all I saw was this horrible person who never even tries to hide how horrible he is.

Of course, as this is just the first book, we don’t really know what is to come. Since Niezghani is just chillin under the dirt, I think we can assume that he’ll be back. Nonetheless, I’m a bit disappointed that he was pacified/restrained at the end of this book. I kind of hoped that after this confrontation, Maggie would have an epiphany about all the shit he put her through, and then in following books he would be the main antagonist. They would have various run-ins, but only in the final book has she truly built up the strength to get her comeuppance. Or something like that. I just wanted Niezghani’s role to be stretched out is all. I wanted her arc of truly unpacking all of that mess to be over the course of several books, not just one novel in which she’s also distracted by her budding romance with Kai and also the monster stuff.

So yea. It’s a good book. There’s problems, as I’ve clearly stated, but honestly a lot of them come across to me as rookie errors. This is her debut novel, and I don’t think it’s that weird for her to use these tropes in ways that I as a reader don’t care for. However, I definitely think that the pieces are there for her to make excellent use of her setting and characters and pull together a really energetic and thrilling series. Looking forward to returning to the Sixth World!

#book review #trail of lightning #the sixth world #sixth world #6th world #rebecca roanhorse #trail of lightning review #indigenous futurism #scifi #indigeneity #books #my post #jub jub reads books

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eldermillarmissionblog · 5 years ago

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Mission Farewell Talk

Good evening, brothers and sisters. It’s good to be able to speak to you tonight. This is definitely not how I envisioned giving my mission farewell talk, but I’m grateful for the technology that allows us to have virtual meetings like this. As Bishop mentioned, I was originally assigned to the Chiclayo Peru mission, but, due to COVID, I have been temporarily reassigned to the Scottsdale Arizona mission and I start my online missionary training this Wednesday. Regardless of where I serve, I am excited to serve my Savior and His children over the next two years and share the things that I know to be true. To start out my talk, I would like to pose a question that I want you all to think about. When was the last time you heard something on the news, or read something on social media that you just had to share? Whether it was something about the weather, politics, the current worldwide pandemic, or just some weird scientific fact. As some examples, here are random factual comments made in my family recently:

Did you know that during his entire NBA career, Shaquille O’Neil only made 1 three-pointer?

Did you know that in the United States, one in eight people have been employed by McDonald’s?

Or, did you know that squirrels are able to survive falls from almost any height because they can spread out their bodies midair and affect the terminal velocity at which they are falling?

If any of you have said something remotely similar to this, I want to congratulate you. You have everything it takes to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. To explain, the word gospel literally means “good news.” So, all we are doing is sharing good news with people. However, instead of sharing odd facts about squirrels or Shaq’s inability to make jump shots, we can share the news that God has appeared to man in our day. We have a living prophet that leads and guides this church. And through Jesus Christ and His Atoning sacrifice, we can have the opportunity to return to our Father in Heaven, and be sealed to our families for time and all eternity. It is as simple as that. But, if you are anything like me, it sometimes doesn’t feel that simple, or easy. Honestly, it can be scary to talk to someone about the gospel. It can be difficult to even open your mouth. Sometimes you feel inadequate, have doubts, or feel like you will be unable to answer questions the person might have. Maybe you are afraid of rejection, afraid of making it awkward between you and a friend, or maybe you just don’t think you have the time, energy, or talents to share the gospel. Ultimately, it can be difficult at times to do as Doctrine and Covenants section 4 says, and “embark in the service of God.” However, the gospel of Jesus Christ is not an individual religion. It is a religion centered on families and we as members of Christ’s Restored Church are called to share our faith with the human family. So, as the basis of my talk today, I want to speak on how we can set aside any doubts, fears, or obstacles we may face so that we can fully “embark” in the service of God. I hope that my message will be helpful to anyone, whether you are a member missionary, currently serving in the field like Elder Laird and Elder Eldredge, or those like me who are preparing to serve.

First, I would like to share a scripture with you all. I mentioned it briefly, but I would like to share all of it with you.

Doctrine and Covenants section 4 states:

1 Now behold, a marvelous work is about to come forth among the children of men.

2 Therefore, O ye that embark in the service of God, see that ye serve him with all your heart, might, mind and strength, that ye may stand blameless before God at the last day.

3 Therefore, if ye have desires to serve God ye are called to the work;

4 For behold the afield is white already to harvest; and lo, he that thrusteth in his sickle with his might, the same layeth up in store that he perisheth not, but bringeth salvation to his soul;

5 And faith, hope, charity and love, with an eye single to the glory of God, qualify him for the work.

6 Remember faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, brotherly kindness, godliness, charity, humility, diligence.

7 Ask, and ye shall receive; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. Amen.

There are three points I want to highlight from this passage that I think can help us all learn how to embark in the service of God.

The first one is desire.

As it says in verse 3, “Therefore, if ye have desires to serve God ye are called to the work.” Evidently, having a desire to serve God is one of the first things necessary to embark in the service of God. But how do we have this desire? Maybe like me, your desire to serve God is incredibly strong one day, and not really there the next. Perhaps we are all like Peter and the story of him walking on water. We might at first have such a desire to serve God and we are so focused on the Savior we feel like we could walk on water. But other days we might find ourselves struggling, sinking even, due to fear, doubt, or just a lack of motivation because it seems easier to go about our own business and not share the gospel. I think Elder Uchtdorf gave some wonderful insights in his talk from the October 2019 General Conference. He said: “…mortal life has a way of distracting us, doesn’t it? We tend to lose sight of our great quest, preferring comfort and ease over growth and progress. Still, there remains something undeniable, deep within our hearts, that hungers for a higher and nobler purpose. This hunger is one reason why people are drawn to the gospel and Church of Jesus Christ. The restored gospel is, in a sense, a renewal of the call to adventure we accepted so long ago. The Savior invites us, each day, to set aside our comforts and securities and join Him on the journey of discipleship.” He continues, “So how do you begin? It’s quite simple. First, you need to choose to incline your heart to God. Strive each day to find Him. Learn to love Him. And then let that love inspire you to learn, understand, and follow His teachings and learn to keep God’s commandments.” I really like what Elder Uchtdorf said. We have to find the Savior EACH day in our lives and learn to love Him. Then, when we have found Him, and when we have love for Him, we will want to extend that love to others. We can find God in the scriptures. We can find Him when we pray. And we can find Him when we serve. It may sound counterintuitive, but if you are lacking a desire to embark in the service of God — just SERVE! My mission prep teacher at BYU told me that if I am ever lacking a desire to read the Book of Mormon, read it until I have the desire. Synonymously, if you are lacking the desire to embark in missionary work — just embark. Serve. Pray for a desire. It will come.

The next point I want to talk about from Doctrine and Covenants 4, is the principle of asking God for help in our missionary efforts.

I think this principle is especially important for us all during this worldwide pandemic. We have all had to adjust to doing things differently, including how we approach missionary work. In my experience during these past few months, it has been hard to find opportunities to share the gospel when I am largely just at home and not seeing very many people. However, when I have asked God for assistance in guiding my missionary efforts, I have come to gain a testimony of the truth found in section 4 that says: “Ask and ye shall receive, knock and it shall be opened unto you.” Although the promptings I receive and the experiences I am led to are much different than they were before COVID-19, my prayers are still answered. Such answers have come in the form of feeling inspired to just share a scripture on social media, send a complimentary text, give time to serve others, say a prayer for a friend in need, or just be a listening ear to someone going through a hard time. These may seem like insignificant actions, and sometimes don’t even have the appearance of missionary work, but as we read in Alma 37 verse 7: “And the Lord God doth work by means to bring about his great and eternal purposes; and by very small means the Lord doth confound the wise and bringeth about the salvation of many souls.” Brothers and sisters, missionary work has changed, and as such, we are in need of wisdom from God. We need to ask Him for guidance. People are being prepared to hear the message of the Restored Gospel at this very moment, and if we but ask, the Lord can use us to help bring those people the peace and hope they desire at this time. President M. Russell Ballard, the acting president of the Quorum of the Twelve apostles said in his October 2013 address, open quote: “Trust the Lord. He is the Good Shepherd. He knows His sheep, and His sheep know His voice; and today the voice of the Good Shepherd is your voice and my voice. And if we are not engaged, many who hear the message of the Restoration will be passed by. Simply stated, it’s a matter of faith and action on our part. The principles are pretty simple — pray, personally and in your family, for missionary opportunities. The Lord has said in the Doctrine and Covenants that many people have been kept from the truth only “because they know not where to find it”. You don’t have to be an outgoing person or an eloquent, persuasive teacher. If you have an abiding love and hope within you, the Lord has promised if you “lift up your voices unto this people [and] speak the thoughts that [He] shall put into your hearts;… you shall not be confounded before men; [And] it shall be given you… in the very moment, what ye shall say.” Close quote. Ask God to guide your efforts. Ask the missionaries for ideas. Just ask. You will receive answers.

The next principle is trust.

At least for me, this is perhaps one of the hardest parts of embarking in the service of God. Once we have the desire to serve Him, we ask for guidance, and we are led to missionary opportunities, we have to have trust (or I like to refer to it as faith) that we can do and share what the Lord needs us to. As it says in section four, remember faith, for faith (along with other qualities) qualify us for the work. But how can we have faith and trust sufficient to be an instrument in the Lord’s hands? There are a few things I can think of that can help us all trust a little more in God as we engage in missionary work.

First, it is necessary that we recognize what embarking is. I once heard a quote that said something along the lines of: Courage is not the absence of fear, but doing something despite being afraid. Similarly, embarking in the service of God does not mean we are without doubts or hesitations, it is serving God even though we have hesitations. The very essence of trusting and having faith in God is being humble enough to accept that we can’t do this alone and we need His help to overcome the obstacles that stand in our way.

Second, we need to realize that as we embark in the service of God, our fears, doubts, and insecurities can be turned into peace and trust in the Lord. Doctrine and Covenants section 59 verse 23 reads: “He who doth the works of righteousness shall receive his reward, even peace in this world, and eternal life in the world to come.” When we trust in God and do His work, we are rewarded with peace, not just in the future, but now as we serve.

Lastly, we need to recognize that the Lord will magnify our efforts. President Henry B. Eyring said in his October 2002 General Conference address: “The Lord will magnify what you say and what you do in the eyes of the people you serve. He will send the Holy Ghost to manifest to them that what you spoke was true. What you say and do will carry hope and give direction to people far beyond your natural abilities and your own understanding. That miracle has been a mark of the Lord’s Church in every dispensation.” If we put trust in the Lord and embark in the work of God, regardless of if we mess up or fall short, He will use your efforts to bless countless people.

Brothers and sisters, embarking in the service of God may be difficult at times, but the process is remarkably simple. If we have a desire to serve God, ask Him to guide us to missionary opportunities, and trust that He has the ability to magnify our efforts despite our shortcomings, we can all be powerful instruments in the hands of God. Whether you are deciding to serve a mission, have already served one, or are a member missionary, I invite you all to embark in the service of God each and everyday. When you lose sight of the Savior, your desire to serve begins to falter, and you begin to sink like Peter on the water, call out to the Savior, He will come. Keep striving. Keep repenting. As Elder Uchtdorf said: Walking the path of discipleship takes practice—each day, little by little, “grace for grace,” “line upon line.” Sometimes two steps forward and one step back. The important thing is that you don’t give up; keep trying to get it right. You will eventually become better, happier, and more authentic. Talking with others about your faith will become normal and natural. In fact, the gospel will be such an essential, precious part of your lives that it would feel unnatural not to talk about it with others. That may not happen immediately—it is a lifelong effort. But it will happen.”

Bear testimony.

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gordonwilliamsweb · 5 years ago

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Fear Of Coronavirus Propels Some Smokers To Quit

In 40 years of smoking, Katie Kennedy has tried four times to quit but always went back to cigarettes. Today, she is summoning a new mental image when a craving comes on: rows of COVID-19 patients hooked to ventilators.

Kennedy’s dad also smoked. He was on a ventilator before he died, and seeing how invasive the machine was and watching his discomfort and distress made Kennedy vow not to die like that.

“I just decided it’s time to protect my lungs as much as I can,” said Kennedy, 59, who started a cessation class in Sacramento, California, in March. “COVID-19 is quite a motivator.”

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Early studies suggest that smokers who develop COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, are 14 times more likely to need intensive treatment compared with nonsmokers. Doctors in California are seizing this moment to highlight the connection between COVID-19 and smoking as another reason people should quit.

The toll-free California Smokers’ Helpline ― 1-800-NO-BUTTS — which offers free cessation advice, is redirecting research money to provide two weeks of free nicotine patches, sent directly to a caller’s home.

Calls to the help line in March were down 27.5% compared with the same month last year — which the staff attributes mainly to people being too stressed out to consider quitting. Nonetheless, staffers say some callers are referencing the coronavirus and the upheaval of the state’s stay-at-home order as their inspiration to quit.

“I spoke with a gentleman last week who is seriously taking this time to reorganize his life,” said Nallely Espina, a counselor with the help line. “He’s setting a new routine for himself at home and staying away from his smoker friends, which was one of his main triggers.”

California public health agencies are incorporating information about a link between smoking and the coronavirus into their social media and public outreach messages. (Credit: California Department of Public Health)

A man in his mid-20s was prompted to call after he read a news article about how even young people who smoke could have more severe health complications from the virus, she said. About half her callers are using the time at home to revamp their habits: start yoga, meditation or a healthier diet. The rest seem supremely frazzled, being trapped inside with their families.

Espina helped one dad devise new coping strategies.

“Going outside and having that cigarette, it’s his time out from the kids,” she said. “So for him, we decided let’s still go outside, but instead of having a cigarette, maybe you spend those minutes doing a few pushups and burpees? And he loved that idea. He went for it.”

California public health agencies are incorporating information about the link between smoking and the coronavirus into their social media and public outreach messages, building on a 30-year legacy of aggressive anti-smoking campaigns and policies.

The state was the first to ban smoking on airplanes and in restaurants and bars, adding a long list of other public spaces over the years that made smoking logistically difficult and culturally unpopular. As a result, California has the second-lowest smoking rate in the country ― 11.3% — after Utah, where only 8.9% of the population smokes and Mormon values are credited with discouraging the habit.

While health advocates nudge smokers to quit, some researchers wonder whether California’s low smoking rate will influence how the state fares through the pandemic.

“It’s a really great question,” said Ruth Malone, a professor emerita of nursing at the University of California-San Francisco, who has studied tobacco control for 20 years. “Smokers do much worse if they contract the virus, which is not too surprising given that it attacks lung tissue. There also is some new research suggesting that it might even promote transmission because of the particular pathways that it hooks on to.”

Proving a correlation would require sophisticated modeling to isolate smoking as a risk factor from the many others that help determine geographic differences in the spread and severity of the virus. Those factors include population density, when the virus was introduced in a community and the timing of mitigation measures, like shelter-at-home orders, which California was the first to institute.

Researchers have long known that smoking makes it harder to fight off respiratory infections, because it increases mucus production and paralyzes cilia, the hairlike fibers in the respiratory tract and lungs that normally flush out invaders.

“If any organism gets down there in the lower airways, whether it’s the coronavirus or another virus, you’ve got the mucus that it can get stuck in, and it can’t get whisked away because the cilia are not working,” said Dr. John Swartzberg, professor emeritus of infectious diseases at UC-Berkeley. “So those organisms have a perfect home.”

Newer science indicates smoking may also increase a person’s chance of contracting the coronavirus, because tobacco increases a certain enzyme receptor in the cells ― angiotensin-converting enzyme-2 — where scientists believe the virus attaches and infects it, said Marcos García-Ojeda, an immunologist at UC-Merced.

“I spoke with a gentleman last week who is seriously taking this time to reorganize his life,” says Nallely Espina, a counselor with the California Smokers’ Helpline. “He’s setting a new routine for himself at home and staying away from his smoker friends, which was one of his main triggers.” (Courtesy of the California Smokers’ Helpline)

Imagine a human cell as a house with doors and windows where the virus can enter, he added. “If you smoke, now you have increased the amount of windows and doors for the virus to come in,” he said.

Still, other scientists hypothesize that the virus enters cells through a different receptor — one that nicotine may be able to block. Researchers in France plan to explore whether wearing a nicotine patch may help prevent infection, while acknowledging that smokers who do develop COVID-19 are more likely to experience more severe symptoms.

Tobacco-control advocates are calling on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to collect more robust data on the connection between smoking and the coronavirus. The development of a reliable and widely available coronavirus antibody test could also help characterize the connection.

“Once we start doing very robust antibodies studies, we’ll be able to take a population of people infected and see how many of them are smokers versus nonsmokers. Then you could see what the morbidity in each group is,” said Swartzberg. “That study would be very simple to do.”

Figuring out whether low smoking rates contribute to a reduction in overall infections would be harder, requiring more complex models that can control for other potential factors. For example, the smoking rate in New York City, the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S., is roughly the same as California’s. That could either invalidate the idea that a low smoking rate is protective, experts say, or indicate that smoking is just one of many, many variables that influence the impact of the outbreak.

“We went to physical-distancing policies and closing nonessential businesses a few days earlier than New York. I think those were a critical few days,” said Dr. John Balmes, a pulmonologist and professor of medicine at UCSF. California cities also tend to be less densely populated than Eastern cities, Balmes added.

In the meantime, doctors are relying on what they do know to persuade people to try to quit smoking now.

“Once you stop smoking or vaping, your lungs, your immune system, they start getting better within minutes,” said Dr. Elisa Tong, a physician at UC-Davis and project director for the University of California Tobacco Cessation Network.

Katie Kennedy of Sacramento has been learning these lessons at her smoking cessation class, which moved to online sessions. Being cooped up at home has presented some challenges for her.

“My husband smokes,” Kennedy said. “And that’s probably the biggest trigger.” It was their ritual, to smoke together. The times she has relapsed, it was always with him. Now that they’re stuck at home with each other nonstop, there’s constant temptation.

“There is the thought that passes through my brain, ‘Oh, he’s going out for a cigarette. That sounds good,’” she said. “Well, when I get that urge, I know it’s the nicotine talking. So I pop a nicotine lozenge and take a deep breath and try to busy myself with something else.”

She said it helps to refocus her mind on why she wanted to quit in the first place.

This KHN story first published on California Healthline, a service of the California Health Care Foundation.

Fear Of Coronavirus Propels Some Smokers To Quit published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

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stephenmccull · 5 years ago

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Fear Of Coronavirus Propels Some Smokers To Quit

Kennedy’s dad also smoked. He was on a ventilator before he died, and seeing how invasive the machine was and watching his discomfort and distress made Kennedy vow not to die like that.

“I just decided it’s time to protect my lungs as much as I can,” said Kennedy, 59, who started a cessation class in Sacramento, California, in March. “COVID-19 is quite a motivator.”

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Subscribe to KHN’s free Weekly Edition newsletter.

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Espina helped one dad devise new coping strategies.

While health advocates nudge smokers to quit, some researchers wonder whether California’s low smoking rate will influence how the state fares through the pandemic.

In the meantime, doctors are relying on what they do know to persuade people to try to quit smoking now.

Katie Kennedy of Sacramento has been learning these lessons at her smoking cessation class, which moved to online sessions. Being cooped up at home has presented some challenges for her.

She said it helps to refocus her mind on why she wanted to quit in the first place.

This KHN story first published on California Healthline, a service of the California Health Care Foundation.

Fear Of Coronavirus Propels Some Smokers To Quit published first on https://smartdrinkingweb.weebly.com/

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dinafbrownil · 5 years ago

Text

Fear Of Coronavirus Propels Some Smokers To Quit

Kennedy’s dad also smoked. He was on a ventilator before he died, and seeing how invasive the machine was and watching his discomfort and distress made Kennedy vow not to die like that.

“I just decided it’s time to protect my lungs as much as I can,” said Kennedy, 59, who started a cessation class in Sacramento, California, in March. “COVID-19 is quite a motivator.”

Don't Miss A Story

Subscribe to KHN’s free Weekly Edition newsletter.

Please confirm your email address below:

Espina helped one dad devise new coping strategies.

While health advocates nudge smokers to quit, some researchers wonder whether California’s low smoking rate will influence how the state fares through the pandemic.

In the meantime, doctors are relying on what they do know to persuade people to try to quit smoking now.

Katie Kennedy of Sacramento has been learning these lessons at her smoking cessation class, which moved to online sessions. Being cooped up at home has presented some challenges for her.

She said it helps to refocus her mind on why she wanted to quit in the first place.

This KHN story first published on California Healthline, a service of the California Health Care Foundation.

from Updates By Dina https://khn.org/news/fear-of-coronavirus-propels-some-smokers-to-quit/

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sharionpage · 7 years ago

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Musings of a May-December Hopeful Romantic

CW: Mothers favored in the LDS Church/Women’s worth tied in with child-bearing

Last week, Russell M. Nelson became the new Prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His wife, Dr. Wendy Watson Nelson is an accomplished writer and former professor of Marriage and Family Therapy at BYU. The two married, and were eternally sealed in the Salt Lake Temple in 2006, just two years before my husband and I got married. We and the Nelsons share one thing in common – a 26 year age difference. Similar to my situation, this was her first marriage, while this was certainly not his.

I too, know what it is like to have advanced degrees and no husband. I used to joke that I had walked down the aisle more times than the average woman – wearing a cap and gown (I’m working on a PhD; so hopefully, I’ll be walking down the aisle one final time)! I finally got married in my late 20’s, so I can’t imagine being in my 50’s and not having found “the one,” as Sister Nelson did. Also like her, I will probably never have children. It’s just not going to happen, barring of course, the Immaculate Conception, which as Mormons, we all know is false doctrine anyway.

Marrying a man 26 years my senior was not exactly my plan, but my husband and I love each other very much and have been together now for twelve years. We celebrate ten years of marriage this September. The most difficult part of our marriage has been the misunderstandings it has created, along with the rejection that accompanies it – mostly from family. My family has accepted him – for the most part, but his side is a different story.

If I could talk with Sister Nelson, I would ask her questions, such as how she relates to his “children” that are close to her age (or older!)? What do they consider her? – I’m sure they don’t call her “Mom” but she’s not exactly their “step-sister” either. Furthermore, how does she relate to his grandchildren (and great-grandchildren, in his case!), considering she has never had children herself? Do they call her Aunt Wendy? These are the types of questions that plague me every day in my own marriage. How does it feel not having living Parents-in-Law? I’m sure for many women it would be a blessing in disguise to not have a Mother-in-Law, but for me it hurts not having heard the words “Welcome to the Family” from anyone other than my husband. It’s a rather lonely place to be in and makes holidays difficult when you can’t have a real sense of extended family. In my case, I was looking forward to marrying into a whole new family, but sadly, it’s just not there.

As a Mormon, there is the issue of eternal sealing – the proverbial “elephant” in the room nobody wants to talk about. Since President Nelson is widowed, he is now eternally married to more than one wife, which in a technical sense means he’s in a plural marriage. His wife has to deal with this issue too, by default; but at the same time, I would imagine she understood that when she married him. As a Mormon convert, this is also a worry of mine. I do have the advantage of my husband being a non-member, but given the rules, I worry that somebody will come along 110 years later and ruin my celestial honeymoon with an extra sealing.

But there is more. Given the statement made last week by President Nelson concerning a woman’s purpose being tied in with child-bearing, if you think about it, is he really practicing what he preaches? Unless his wife gives birth in the Celestial Kingdom, she will not be giving him children. I wonder how this makes her feel to hear her husband – the Prophet – say something like that! There has to be some cognitive dissonance there, in addition to feelings of failure in this mortal life. I understand, because I deal with these same feelings of inadequacy every time I go to church.

There is yet another aspect of this story to consider, and this, in my opinion, has to count for something in the eternal scheme of things. I’ll admit when I got married just shy of 29, I felt like the “Old Maid” in the card game I used to play. I waited an eternity for my husband, at least from my perspective. But I could not imagine being an accomplished marriage and family therapist and having to wait until my 50’s to get married – and being Mormon! However, it would seem to me that in the end, Dr. Nelson got the prize. Not only did she find the man I’m sure she prayed for all those years, but now she is the wife of the Prophet! I believe she waited for God’s timing, and for that she was rewarded greatly. She is now in a place to be an inspiration to Mormon women everywhere – she is what I would call a church “Matriarch” in the truest sense with a lot of influence.

While I will never be wife of the Prophet – or even wife of a “Priesthood Holder” (thank goodness!), my husband and I have shared our own uniquely profound spiritual experiences (some of which I have shared in previous posts). I believe many of these experiences occur due to his noteworthy Hebrew lineage, of which I personally don’t share. For me, being the lowly “Ephraimite” I am – and an ex-Baptist, at that – I’m not quite sure what I did to deserve these spiritual experiences, but I am thankful for them. Every day.

While my prayers for a “goodly” husband were honored, some days the loneliness and disconnect we feel in our marriage is so unbearable, at least it is for me. And yet, we still have each other. Between the two of us, there is a lot of love there. I ask myself all the time why I just can’t be happy with that? I often wonder if I made some kind of compromise in the Pre-existence in order to be able to share in these spiritual experiences with him? I guess I will never know. That said, I am so thankful for my knowledge of my Mother in Heaven, and nobody can ever take that away from me. I should be thankful every day and not “wallow” in self pity. But how many of us, if we are honest with ourselves, have dwelled in self pity due to feeling misunderstood, even in the midst of our many blessings? It is sometimes difficult to see our own blessings when they are different from the blessings of those around us.

But that proves my point. We never know God’s plan, and God’s ways are not our ways. I believe the same goes for the Church and our unrealistic expectations towards other members who do not fit our preconceived notions of “worthiness.” I recently had an experience where I wrongfully judged someone who is not a member of our church – and the Holy Ghost let me know it in a very real way. At the same time, I have felt misunderstood many times over by church members and non-church members alike. We need to forgive and try our best to move on. Nobody is perfect; everyone makes mistakes. Each situation is different, and in the end, our Heavenly Parents are the only ones who have the divine right to judge.

That said, I’m convinced LDS May-December romances can be a beautiful, eternal mess, but now my husband and I have an example within the Church leadership to look up to. I no longer need to be ashamed of my own circumstances at church because the Prophet’s wife is in a very similar situation to that of mine. This for me is a great comfort. While I understand many progressive Mormons were upset on the day Nelson was installed, I had my own personal reasons for rejoicing. This does not mean I support everything President Nelson stands for – I most certainly do not! – but it means that I have hope that my own eternal mess of a marriage can be blessed by our Heavenly Parents in a very special way.

Musings of a May-December Hopeful Romantic published first on https://bitspiritspace.tumblr.com/

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newstfionline · 8 years ago

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How Utah Keeps the American Dream Alive

Megan McArdle, Bloomberg, March 28, 2017

There’s no getting around it: For a girl raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Salt Lake City is a very weird place.

I went to Utah precisely because it’s weird. More specifically, because economic data suggest that modest Salt Lake City, population 192,672, does something that the rest of us seem to be struggling with: It helps people move upward from poverty. I went to Utah in search of the American Dream.

Columnists don’t talk as much as they used to about the American Dream. They’re more likely to talk about things like income mobility, income inequality, the Gini coefficient--sanitary, clinical terms. These are easier to quantify than a dream, but also less satisfying. We want money, yes, but we hunger even more deeply for something else: for possibility. It matters to Americans that someone born poor can retire rich. That possibility increasingly seems slimmer and slimmer in most of the nation, but in Utah, it’s still achievable.

If you were born to parents who were doing well, you are likely to be doing well yourself. If you were born to parents who were not doing well, then you are likely to repeat their fate. To take just one metric of many: In a society in which a college degree is almost required for entry into the upper middle class, 77 percent of people whose families are in the top quarter of the earnings distribution secure a bachelor’s degree by the time they are 24. For people in the lowest income bracket, that figure is 9 percent.

But things look a lot better in Salt Lake City, which economists Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Patrick Kline and Emmanuel Saez identified as having the highest rates of absolute upward mobility in the nation. So I went to Utah to discover its secrets and assess whether they could be exported.

Once I got there, I found that it’s hard to even get a complete picture of how Utah combats poverty, because so much of the work is done by the Mormon Church, which does not compile neat stacks of government figures for the perusal of eager reporters.

The church did, however, give me a tour of its flagship social service operation, known as Welfare Square. It’s vast and inspiring and utterly foreign to anyone familiar with social services elsewhere in the country. This starts to offer some clue as to why Utah seems to be so good at generating mobility--and why that might be hard to replicate without the Latter-Day Saints.

UTAH-STYLE GOVERNMENT. There’s bad news and good news.

Bad news: The wide gulf between Utah and, say, North Carolina implies that we do, in fact, have a real problem on our hands. A child born in the bottom quintile of incomes in Charlotte has only a 4 percent chance of making it into the top quintile. A child in Salt Lake City, on the other hand, has more than a 10.8 percent chance--achingly close to the 11.7 percent found in Denmark and well on the way to the 20 percent chance you would expect in a perfectly just world.

“Big government” does not appear to have been key to Utah’s income mobility. From 1977 to 2005, when the kids in Chetty et al’s data were growing up, the Rockefeller Institute ranks it near the bottom in state “fiscal capacity.” The state has not invested a lot in fighting poverty, nor on schools; Utah is dead last in per-pupil education spending.

But “laissez faire” isn’t the answer either. Utah is a deep red state, but its conservatism is notably compassionate, thanks in part to the Mormon Church. Its politicians, like Senator Mike Lee, led the way in rejecting Donald Trump’s bid for the presidency. And the state is currently engaged in a major initiative on intergenerational poverty. The bill that kicked it off passed the state’s Republican legislature unanimously, and the lieutenant governor has been its public face.

This follows what you might call the state’s “war on homelessness”--a war that has been largely victorious, with most of the state’s homeless resettled in permanent housing through a focus on “Housing First.” That means getting people into permanent shelter before trying to diagnose and address the problems that contributed to their homelessness, like mental illness and substance abuse.

This approach can be cheaper than the previous regime, in which too many individuals ended up in emergency rooms or temporary shelter seeking expensive help for urgent crises. But Housing First runs into fierce emotional resistance in many quarters, because it smacks too much of rewarding people for self-destructive behaviors. Utah’s brand of conservatism overcame that, in part because the Mormon Church supported it.

People in Utah’s government casually talk about getting the community involved in their efforts, not as a rote genuflection to a political ideal, but as an actual expectation. “Government’s not going to solve all this, and that’s why you’re in the room,” Lieutenant Governor Spencer Cox said to attendees of a community meeting about the Intergenerational Poverty Initiative, and it wasn’t just an idle hope. Utah really does have an immense parallel structure that can be counted on to bolster anything the government does on poverty. Its front door is Welfare Square.

THE MORMON WELFARE NETWORK. Like most social service agencies, Welfare Square is in one of the less pretty parts of town, tucked just off the highway between industrial buildings and modest tract homes. The complex itself, incorporating public spaces where help is offered, and private spaces where the church manufactures many of the goods it gives away, is built of modest materials and is kept scrupulously clean. And it is vast.

Many charity operations offer a food pantry or a thrift shop. Few of them can boast, in addition, their own bakery, dairy operation and canning facilities, all staffed by volunteers. The food pantry itself looks like a well-run grocery store, except that it runs not on money, but on “Bishop’s Orders” spelling out an individualized list of food items authorized by the bishop handling each case. This grows out of two features of Mormon life: the practice of storing large amounts of food against emergencies (as well as giving food away, the church sells it to people for their home storage caches), and an unrivaled system of highly organized community volunteer work.

The volunteering starts in the church wards, where bishops keep a close eye on what’s going on in the congregation, and tap members as needed to help each other. If you’re out of work, they may reach out to small business people to find out who’s hiring. If your marriage is in trouble, they’ll find a couple who went through a hard time themselves to offer advice.

But it does not stop with informal networks. Mormon youth are encouraged to go on missions. Many of them evangelize, of course, but others end up doing work for the church, including at Welfare Square. Every Mormon is expected to skip two meals a month, and to donate at least the value of the food they would have bought (and preferably more) to help the needy. They’re also encouraged to volunteer for the church. A job center at Welfare Square harnesses the still-prodigious energies of retirees; when I was there, an immigration center, also staffed with volunteers, was just starting up. The assistance offered is not unique, but the sheer scale of it is; few other churches could muster a similar army of willing, helpful people, or deploy them so efficiently.

The Mormon Church has a particular philosophy of help. Don Johnson, division director for the Welfare Department of the Church, spoke of the Pharisees quizzing Jesus in the gospels: “They asked the savior what is the greatest commandment--love God, and love your neighbor.” For the Mormon Church, that means making sure that no one goes hungry.

But the church is quite clear that the help is a temporary waypoint on the road to self-sufficiency, not a way of life. People are asked to work in exchange for the help they get, and, as the bishop said, “We make a list of what will sustain human life, not lifestyle.” I sampled various of the food items, and all were perfectly tasty, but nothing was what you would call fancy. It’s a utilitarian stopgap, not a substitute for an income, and not meant to be; the help comes with a healthy push to get yourself back on your feet as quickly as possible. The two phrases I heard over and over were “individual” and “self-reliant.”

“It’s a failure on the part of many,” he said, “if this is going on for six months or a year and their condition hasn’t changed.”

This combination of financial help and the occasional verbal kick in the pants is something close to what the ideal of government help used to be. Social workers used to make individual judgments about what sort of help their clients needed or deserved. But such judgments always have an inherently subjective and arbitrary quality, which courts began to frown on in the middle of the 20th century, in part because they offered considerable discretion for racial discrimination.

THE RACE FACTOR. One astonishing feature of Utah is how little people talk about race. The state population is now about 13 percent Hispanic, but only 1 percent black. Part of the explanation is probably the Mormon Church’s century of institutional racism.

During the era of founder Joseph Smith, the church actually seems to have been relatively egalitarian for its time. But his successor, Brigham Young, who led the Latter-Day Saints to Utah, excluded black followers from the priesthood (which is generally open to every Mormon man), keeping them out of the center of ecclesiastical life. The doctrine did not change until 1978, and the church’s racist past still lingers.

Unsurprisingly, the Mormons did not attract many black converts during the century that the ban was in place. Given that Utah is primarily peopled by Mormons, its population skews white.

This near-absence of racial diversity means that racism is largely left out of Utah’s conversations about economic inequality. That leads to some conversations around inequality that would be unbearably fraught elsewhere. When the poor people are, by and large, the same race as the richer ones, people find it easier to talk about them the way they might talk about, well, family members--as folks who may have made some mistakes and started with some disadvantages, but also as folks who could be self-sufficient after a little help from an uncle or a sister. It’s a very different conversation from “victim”/”oppressor” and “us”/”them”: a conversation that recognizes that poor people often make choices that keep them in poverty, but also that the constraints of poverty, including the social environment of poor neighborhoods, make it very difficult to make another choice.

Utah’s willingness to help, and its ability to help, may arise from its homogeneity--a trait that won’t be exported to the diverse nation at large.

THE SOURCE OF STABILITY. Utah is an aberration in many other ways. Look at alcohol and marriage.

The Mormon Church forbids drinking, and alcohol sales are far lower here than in other states. The incidence of problems associated with alcohol--like poverty, unemployment and crime--is also lower than in most other states.

On the other hand, the Mormon Church strongly encourages marriage, and the state is #1 in both married adults and in the percentage of children being raised by married parents.

Chetty et al suggest that having two married parents is a bedrock foundation of economic mobility--one that is rapidly eroding in modern America.

By encouraging members to marry, the Mormon Church is encouraging them to reduce their own likelihood of ending up poor. But it may also be creating spillover effects even for non-Mormons, because Chetty et al didn’t just find that married parents helped their own children to rise; they also influenced the lives of the children around them.

If you live in a neighborhood full of single mothers who had a hard time finishing school, that’s probably the future you’ll expect for yourself and your own kids. If you live in a neighborhood full of thriving two-parent families, that’s probably the future you’ll envision, even if your own father disappeared when you were 2. Marriage matters at the individual level, but it also matters at the community level, because the community can strongly shape individual behavior.

CAN UTAH’S MOBILITY BE REPLICATED? Utah’s incredible levels of integration, of community solidarity and support, of trust in government and in each other, enable it to build something unique in America, something a bit like Sweden might be, if it were run by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Where the best ideas of conservatives and liberals came together in one delicious package: business friendly, opportunity friendly, but also highly committed to caring for the needy and helping them get back on their feet.

No place is perfect. But with mobility seemingly stalled elsewhere, and our politics quickly becoming as bitter as a double Campari with no ice, I really, really wanted to find pieces of Utah’s model that could somehow be exported.

Price gave me some hope. The Mormon Church, he says, has created “scripts” for life, and you don’t need religious faith for those; you just need cultural agreement that they’re important. He said: “Imagine the American Medical Association said that if the mother is married when she’s pregnant, the child is likely to do better.” We have lots of secular authorities who could be encouraging marriage, and volunteering, and higher levels of community involvement of all kinds. Looking at the remarkable speed with which norms about gay marriage changed, thanks in part to an aggressive push on the topic from Hollywood icons, I have to believe that our norms about everyone else’s marriages could change too, if those same elites were courageous enough to recognize the evidence, and take a stand.

President George W. Bush talked a lot about compassionate conservatism 15 years ago, but Utah has made it a reality. Utahans seem strongly committed to charitable works, by government, alongside government or outside government. Whatever tools used are infused with an ethic of self-reliance that helps prevent dependency. And yet, when there’s a conflict between that ethic and mercy, Utah institutions err on the side of mercy.

America could use a politics more like that. And the values that make it work are not unique to Mormonism.

#Salt Lake City #Utah and the American Dream #American Dream #Mormons and American Dream

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titoslondon-blog · 8 years ago

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New Post has been published on Titos London

#Blog New Post has been published on http://www.titoslondon.com/askhermore-to-zac-posen-gowns-galore-instyles-a-z-of-awards-season/

#AskHerMore, To Zac Posen Gowns Galore - InStyle’s A-Z Of Awards Season

A is for…#AskHerMore

A is all about the feminist #AskHerMore red carpet movement. Pioneered by Reese Witherspoon and Amy Poehler in 2015, it’s all about changing the way media (that's us too) talks to women and encouraging them to ask better questions than just ‘'Who are you wearing?'. Because quelle surprise women have views on politics and current events as well. B is for…Bliiiiiing

And a whole lot of it. From the now infamous $2.5 million 115-carat Lorraine Schwartz emerald drop earrings that Angelina sashayed down the Oscars 2009 red carpet wearing, to Cate Blanchett’s Chopard earrings, bracelet and ring combo that cost a whopping $18 million, when it comes to standing out at an awards ceremony, it’s all about the bling. The winner of our Ultimate Bling Award? Elizabeth Taylor, obvs. The queen of more is more, Taylor’s then husband Richard Burton bought her a 69.42 carat diamond ring for $1 million but, as Elizabeth puts it, ‘Even for me it was too big. So we had Cartier design a necklace.’ Well, as we always say, when your diamond’s too big to wear as a ring, whack it on a pendant and wear it to the 1970 Academy Awards around your neck instead. Understated, who?

C is for…Charlize Theron

Who knew that Charlize Theron was such a babe? Well, we did. An epic actress (she won an Oscar for her terrifying role in Monster), a style chameleon and repping on the red carpet for taller ladies everywhere, Charlize is the ultimate awards badass and we’re obsessed.

D is for…Diversity

With Meryl Streep’s Golden Globes speech addressing immigration straight on, and the 2017 Oscar nominations finally making progress against #oscarssowhite with a black actor being nominated in all four acting categories for the first time EVER, the awards diversity drought is officially over. Hooray!

E is for…EE Rising Star Award

Arguably the most exciting award of the year (because it involves majorly hyped new talent like Ruth Negga and Tom Holland aka Spiderman) the BAFTA EE Rising Star Award is so snazzy we throw a party for it every year. Check the deets HERE.

F is for…Fancy Dress

Bjork’s swan moment, Cher’s 1986 ‘Mohawk year’ and Rihanna’s Britney-meets-Egyptian bejewelled bodystocking – yup, when it comes to red carpet dressing there’s always one that takes it to that bit too far to the realms of fancy dress. And we look forward to that one every year, natch.

G is for…Gaga

When she’s not being carried along the red carpet in an egg, wearing yesterday’s beef tartare as a dress or performing an epic ode to David Bowie with glam rock costume changes to match, Lady Gaga’s generally stealing the limelight at any and every awards show. Case in point: accepting her 2011 MTV awards in character as her male alter ego Jo Calderone. Lady Gaga going method? Groundbreaking.

H is for…Hosts (The Weird, The Wonderful And The Awkward)

The fun part about awards shows? They inevitably have to be hosted by two celebrities that would never normally talk to each other but now have to share a stage and present funny quips and bits for hours on end. A recipe for success, non? Well, if you’re hilarious comedians and besties Amy Poehler and Tina Fey presenting the 2015 Golden Globes, then yes. But if you’re Anne Hathaway attempting to present the 2011 Oscars with a possibly stoned but either way totally out of it James Franco, then alas, no.

I is for…Insta Madness

If only Bradley's arm was longer. Best photo ever. #oscars pic.twitter.com/C9U5NOtGap

— Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) 3 March 2014

If you didn’t see THAT group selfie at the 2014 Oscars, then what hole were you living in? Ellen’s celebrity studded Hollywood selfie broke the internet and started a new A-list obsession with Instagram. Just try and get through awards season without liking Chrissy Teigen’s adorable backstage pics with John Legend or Lily Collins asking your opinion on what Zuhair Murad gown she should choose. It’s all about the BTS (that’s behind-the-scenes) pics babe.

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J is for…Jennifer Lawrence Falling Over

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Doing a damn good impression of a weeble, Jennifer Lawrence can’t help falling head over heels for awards shows, literally. Tripping over her massive Dior gown on the way to receive her Best Actress Oscar back in 2013, J-Law’s tumble was surely the most Tweeted about awards moment that year. That, and her tripping over a cone. And every other time she’s totally stacked it. Jennifer, we salute your ability to power through embarrassment.

K is for…Kisses

Remember that time Angelina Jolie said she was ’so in love’ with her brother before kissing him smack on the lips at the 2000 Oscars? Well, we do. And tbh, it’s still weird. Between that and John Travolta’s surprise attack on Scarlett Johansson, awards season always seems to bring out the awkward affectionate sides of celebs (and their siblings).

L is for…Loser Face

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Some people can nail the perfect Joey from Friends gracious loser face, and others…well they don’t keep it together so well. Take Samuel L Jackson who, when losing the 1995 Best Supporting Actor Oscar to Martin Landau, could be see mouthing ‘Oh shit’ on screen. Or when Kanye, in true Kanye fashion, took things one step further by crashing Taylor Swfit’s VMA award win to defend losing nominee Beyonce’s honour thus beginning an A-list feud of epic proportions. A polite clap would have been fine.

M is for…Meryl Streep

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Officially the most nominated person EVER. That is all.

N is for…Novel Adaptations We’ve Never Read

Let’s face it, every year there’s a bazillion films nominated that are actually super intellectual novel adaptations that we’ll pretend to our ridiculously informed and cultural friends we’ve totally read but in reality we’ve just watched the movie and googled some original quotes. Soz, not soz.

O is for…Opening Numbers

Hugh Jackman’s adorable, if slightly awkward, dance number with Anne Hathaway at the 2009 Oscars, Andrew Rannell’s all singing, all dancing rendition of ‘I Believe’ from The Book Of Mormon at the 2011 Tony Awards and Neil Patrick Harris’ arguably best ever Tony Awards performance in 2013 are just a few of the awards show opening numbers to go down in history for the right reasons. We won’t mention the wrong ones.

P is for…Poor Leo

2017 aka the year Leonardo Di Caprio finally won an oscar. It’s fair to say a few people may have given up on it ever happening, including Leo himself. #poorleo.

A photo posted by Angel (@bri6427) on

Jun 30, 2016 at 8:40pm PDT

Q is for…Queen Bey

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If anyone else can announce their pregnancy on stage at the Grammys and bring a tear to our eye quite like Queen Bey we’ll eat our jauntily tipped purple fedora Destiny’s Child style. Lest we forget THAT game-changing Country Music Awards performance of Daddy Lessons with Dixie Chicks that we’ve listened to like 300 times. Ok fine, 500.

R is for…Red Carpet Hype

Fact – you can’t have an awards show without a red carpet, but where did it even come from? Why not a blue carpet? First thunk up by LA showman Sid Graumman in 1922, the red carpet made its debut at the first ever Hollywood premiere, Robin Hood, but didn’t make an appearance at the Oscars until 1961 when film enthusiasts watching on tv couldn’t even tell it was red because of the black and white picture. The epitome of you had to be there.

Fun fact – the carpet outside the Dolby Theatre where the Oscars are held is 500 ft long. Incidentally, just enough room for Jennifer Lawrence to fall over in.

S is for…Speech Cock Ups And General Weirdness

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Part two of the awkward hosting section of our A-Z, it’s not an awards season if someone doesn’t mess up an acceptance speech, mispronounce a celeb’s name or send a worthy cause to accept the award on their behalf. Check out Miley Cyrus sending a young homeless dude called Jesse Helt to pick up her 2014 MTV Award (which he’s appaz now auctioning off, that’s gratitude for you), John Travolta classically messing up Idina Menzel’s name and Tom Hiddleston, god bless him, attempting to tell an inspirational anecdote and totally missing the mark. Oscar fails are our fave.

T is for…The Leg

Need we say more? Winning our award for best dressed at the 2012 Oscars, Angelina Jolie’s right leg made such a statement it even had its own Twitter account.

U is for…Ugly Crying

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Yes, it’s an emotional time for everyone, but there’s some that handle the sitch better than others. Gwyneth Paltrow was not one of them. We won’t even mention Halle Berry. Let’s just say we’d give them the Oscar for ugly crying.

V is for…Valentino

That iconic black and white dress Julia Roberts wore to win her Oscar back in 2001 that you always remember every time the Oscars rolls round again? It was Valentino. Cate Blanchett’s timeless one-shouldered yellow dress she wore for her 2005 Best Supporting Actress Oscar win? Yup, Valentino.Scarlett Johansson’s seriously major red dress that put her on the map? You guessed it, Valentino. When it comes to dressing like a winner (or dressing a winner, should we say), Valentino have got it down.

W is for…Wardrobe Malfunctions

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From Chrissy Teigen’s NSFW leg split to Geri Halliwell’s 1997 Brit Awards boob slip, a well-placed (pardon the pun) wardrobe malfunction gets you more column inches than actually winning an award. Our fave? J-Law’s gravity-defying dress tear that magically reattaches itself almost instantly. We geuinely don't know what happened there.

X is for…Exes

There’s nothing better than proving how totally fine you are about an overly publicised breakup by revenge winning an award literally in front of your ex. On the other hand, bumping into an ex on the red carpet isn’t exactly ideal. Oh Hollywood, you’re so small and incestuous and adorable. Brad and Angelina, we wish you good luck.

Y is for…Yellow

Black is so blah. If you want to make a statement on the red carpet it’s all about wearing yellow. Take notes from Reese Witherspoon’s post-Ryan Philippe break up LYD (little yellow dress) and Rachel from Friends fringe that was TOO good or Michelle Williams winning at life in a yellow custom Vera Wang dress that we’ve basically never got over. Nabbing the canary yellow torch and carrying it into 2017, Emma Stone’s red hair, pink lips, yellow dress combo is so chic it’s insane.

Z is for…Zac Posen

Bringing an air of mid-century couture to the often pedestrian fashion proceedings, you can bet your money on Zac Posen dressing the most dramatic, and high fashion celebrity on the red carpet. Noteworthy moment – Christina Hendricks wearing the widest emerald green skirt you ever did see before whipping it off to reveal a fitted mermaid tail gown underneath. And our girl crush hit new heights.

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