It’s been a while since I have posted. Busy, busy bee I am between my day job and preparing for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. I am serving on a committee to host the choir and a group of community leaders.

Most of the area’s 15,000  Latter-day Saints (LDS or Mormons) can’t remember a time when the Tabernacle Choir has performed here. It’s been 51 years after all.

In subsequent posts I’ll share my involvement and behind-the-scenes activities, any I experience, as well as little known trivia facts about the choir.

Here is one: National Geographic’s “USA101″ recently named the Mormon Tabernacle Choir as one of America’s top icons.

Mostly, I hope many of you will experience the concert for yourself.  We have heard them on TV at the Olympics and presidential inaugurations or weekly on the radio, but it is an amazing experience to hear the choir in person.

And the choir in recent years has embraced new styles of music with its own unique…

An Apostle’s Easter Thoughts on Christ

Though Easter is now a week behind us, this video — linked above – posted in celebration of Easter continues to receive hits. A press release explains the popularity of this Easter message:

SALT LAKE CITY 13 April 2009 A short Easter video from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints quickly spread over the weekend to become the top “viral” video on the Internet, according to the Viral Video Chart.

The four-and-a- half-minute video was extracted from an address delivered by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, of the Church’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, at the faith’s general conference on April 4–5, in which he spoke of the final moments in the life of Jesus Christ and talked directly to those who feel alone or abandoned.

Read more: Click here.

Seven-year-old Joseph Hofheins reacts to eating matzah with horseradish during the bitter herbs part of the Passover ceremony, which also included music and dancing. (Stuart Johnson, Deseret News)

Latter-day Saints (Mormon or LDS) have long felt a kinship with Jewish brothers and sisters. It’s becoming popular in recent years for Latter-day Saints (LDS) to take their feelings of kinship to a more active level. Some are participating in a Seder in addition to the traditional Easter services and remembrance observed this time of year.

I remember a few years ago a women’s activity at our local unit of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to make Seder plates. We spent the evening decorating the plates and learning the traditions of the Seder. I really enjoyed the activity. It gave me a great appreciation for the common heritage Christians and Jews share.

Latter-day Saints in areas of Utah are developing large activities for this special time of year. The following news-story is from Deseret…

It was reported today in the Boston Globe that LDS (Mormon) women, many moms among them, are making their mark in young adult literature – click here.

I found my husband Dan, an LDS bishop, reading the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer. I’ve never known him to be interested in young adult fiction, let alone vampires. He only scanned the Harry Potter series to know what his kids were reading. But the Twilight series captured his interest probably because many in his flock are reading it.

Dan took me to see the Twilight movie. I have to say it is probably the first time in our twenty-two year marriage he invited me to see a chick-flick!

It doesn’t surprise me that LDS mom Stephenie Meyer would write a wholesome vampire story. Well, maybe not the wholesome part, but vampires?… they seem scary. So yes, I am surprised about that. But Stephanie’s vampires are so nice that I am ashamed I had held such negative misconceptions of them.

OK, whoa, back to reality.…

I enjoyed Tim Townsend’s article, The Mormon Index, that appeared on the front page of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on January 22. Tim discussed how some economists look at the numbers of people using the Mormon welfare program to gauge the economy.

It’s an obscure index, one that was lost on me though I am a Latter-day Saint (LDS or Mormon). My view of the welfare system of the Church is as an insider who has been benefited by it. I don’t think too many LDS, with the exception of a few LDS economists, were aware of “The Mormon Index” until reading Tim’s article.

The Church’s welfare program is supported by a facility that typically includes a food storehouse, a cannery, an employment resource center, and a family counseling center. The Bridgeton facility in St. Louis Missouri is a central focus in Tim’s article.

My family has been benefited by the facility. In the past, when we’ve needed to stretch…

Since a majority of Californians passed Proposition 8, Latter-day Saints (Mormons), who make up 2% of the California’s population, have been attacked by some who are upset with the outcome.  I have Latter-day Saint family and friends in California. All can share a story of the intimidation they have experienced as a result of their support for Proposition 8.

When the attacks first occurred, Latter-day Saints were stunned as some saw their employment threatened and their places of worship vandalized. Many Latter-day Saints wondered, “where is the outrage? Will no one defend us?”

The rhetoric of anti-religious bigotry surprised many on both sides of the issue.

Some community and religious leaders are now responding.

This week, The Becket Fund, a non-profit interfaith organization that defends religious liberties, posted an ad, signed by community leaders, in the New York Times to defend the right of religious people to speak out on issues with out the fear of retribution.

See ad: click here.

Learn more at the Becket Fund website: click here.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day…

Replica of a temple baptismal font. The twelve oxen symbolize the twelve tribes of Isreal.

An article was sent to me by a friend : What if Mormon’s are right and Catholics and Protestants wrong?.

I am not comfortable with the title of the article because I don’t think an honest truth-seeker is trying to prove anything to anyone, but rather strives to find answer’s for one’s life. “I am right, you are wrong” is not a truthseeker’s mode of expression.  

Despite the title, I found the article interesting and refreshing to see an in depth — well, as in-depth as media sometimes gets in this sound-bite world – treatment on a central religious doctrine, in this case, the practice of proxy baptisms for those who have passed on.

Though familiar with my faith’s practice of “Baptisms for the  ”, I didn’t know the history the article points out. For instance, I understood that the early Christian church practiced baptisms for the . 

We have a hint in 1…

Two questions popped out at me in my reading today. Completely unrelated questions mind you, but both were fascinating (and sometimes frustrating) articles to read.

(1) Why Don’t Churches Pay Taxes?

That is a question The L.A. Times hoped to shed some light on by inviting Barry Lynn (Americans United for the Separation of Church & State) and conservative columnist Erik Stanley together for a Point/Counter-Point column. Lynn consistently gets on my last nerve, but so do preachers who confuse the Bible with political party platforms. Funny though, I’ve never actually sat under a single preacher who pushed his personal political views or endorsed a candidate. I am sure they are out there, but they haven’t served as my pastor. Anyhow, that is a little off-subject from the Times column, but these issues end up all running together anyway. See the article here.

(2) Is Mormonism Christian?

The October 2008 issue of First Things puts…

Last weekend, my church hosted Gladys Knight and the Saint’s Unified Voices Choir.

Yes, that’s right, Gladys Knight, from Gladys Knight and the Pips. Only this time she wasn’t singing with the Pips and she wasn’t singing “Midnight Train to Georgia”.  Instead, she was performing with a 100 person multi-cultural choir made up of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) who live in the Las Vegas, Nevada area.

We had 6000 tickets, free and by invitation only, for four performances that could better be described as praise worship events. Someone called it a “Mormon revival”.

The packed events were much more spirited and lively than anything our church typically does. The musical heritage of our faith finds its roots in those of its early converts, many of whom were white and from the eastern United States and Europe. They brought with them a ural heritage of many faiths, but the influences of African American ure have been slow to take root.

That is…

David Archuleta sings for his hometown crowd. Photo from the newsrooom of lds.org

Tonight’s the night “the two Davids” compete to be crowned the next American Idol.

One, I recently learned, David Archuleta, is a Latter-day Saint (Mormon). I don’t watch T.V. much and I am not up on popular ure, but I hear Mormons are now populating the reality television shows and drawing interest. I learned this from Newsweek.

My first reaction was: “where have I been?” I am missing all the excitement. There are members of my faith who are losing weight (the Biggest Loser), surviving (Survivor) and dancing (Dancing with the Stars and So You Think you can Dance). Who knew?

My second reaction was: “why all the fuss?” Why aren’t the faiths of others mentioned?

I guess it is because people still hold on to the notion that Mormons are not likely to be found doing normal things. If you call eating…