All news is good news?

Mormons make the news again in the PNW. Delilah is a local evening radio host that is syndicated in other parts of the country so her influence is fairly significant. I'm not sure what I think about this. She definitely seems to only have a real problem with Covey's Mormonism rather than his book's tenants. I read a few of the comments...very interesting.

http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2009/dec/25/changes-in-crosspoints-curriculum-draw-ire-from/?partner=popular

Santa Clause

Yep, Jolly Old Saint Nick. In our family we don't push him on our kids. At the same time, we don't push our kids away from him either. We don't feel comfortable feeding our kids a bold faced lie when they directly ask, "Is Santa real?" right after citing some reasons why they don't think he can be. Trey basically figured it out at age 5. Bex has no idea and will probably keep believing until he is 18. Trey is very analytical and not super trusting. Bex is uber-trusting and not overly analytical. A couple of years ago Trey literally backed Marisa into a corner after seeing smoke come out of the neighbor's small chimney. He told her that he doesn't believe Santa can fit through that little burning hole, has tons of small people that work for him, and he absolutely can not make it around to the millions of houses in one night. Would you LIE to your child and tell him that his astute thinking is incorrect and there is magic that allows him to bend the space-time continuum? We couldn't.

I know some people think we rob our children (well, so far just one) of the joy of Christmas by doing this and thus the motivation for this post. It absolutely doesn't take anything away from Christmas. Does the joy for children come from the presents on Christmas morning, or from who gave them? In our experience, Christmas morning has not lost a single lumen of its luster for our oldest child. He is just as excited as he was before, and is just as excited as his younger brothers. In fact, one could argue that Trey has more appreciation knowing that the toys are from us an not some fat old man with red cheeks that gives them away for free. And who knows, maybe he'll be a little less likely to be a socialist and expect some greater force out there to give him things for free...

Bless the food...

I like to post things that I have been thinking about and things that will make others think. The other night one of our son's forgot to "bless the food" when he said prayer over the food at dinner time. I told him not to worry about it because he said "We thank thee for the food." My explanation to him was that I feel it is more important to give thanks for the food than it is to bless it. My reasoning is as follows...

For thousands of years, the primary preoccupation for an individual was "how am I going to eat my next meal?" or "how am I going to survive the winter?" Whenever people ate, they were very grateful to have that food in front of them. When a humble, God-fearing person was getting ready to eat, they felt and expressed gratitude for being able to do so.

Now days, most of us don't really worry about IF we are going to eat. If we worry at all, it is about the caloric intake, what would be the quickest to cook or what would taste the best. This luxury has made us take for granted the number two acute requirement for prolonging life (next to oxygen of course)...FOOD!

Is it really that important to "bless the food?" I submit that it is not. Yet, it is vitally important to give thanks for the food. I'm not saying that we shouldn't bless it, although I do wonder if it is just a modern (last one to two hundred years) twist on "saying grace over the food." Hopefully someone with more knowledge in this area can point me in the right direction. I do think it is silly to go back and say another prayer, just to bless the food though. if you did say things for it. At the same time, I don't think it is silly to go back and say thanks for the food if that essential statement is forgotten.

Anecdotally, I think it is also good to have a habit of meal time prayer to help us turn our thoughts to God and have him ever more present in our lives than He would be if we just said prayer in the evening before going to bed.

Fourfold purposes of the Church?

I don't know if this is news for those of you that are Utards or not, but this is the first I've heard of this out here in the PNW.

http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_13965607

The LDS Church is adding "to care for the poor and needy" to its longstanding "threefold mission," which is to preach the LDS gospel, purify members' lives and provide saving ordinances such as baptism to those who have died.

Very nice. That fits in well and explains why there seemed to be an increased amount of talks on that subject the last conference or two.

Interesting Idea

If you read much of this blog in the beginning you know that although I fully sustain and believe in the prophet, I do not believe in the infallibility of our prophets. That is why I feel comfortable in thinking that BY started the priesthood ban incorrectly, JMHO. Here is a very interesting article at BCC that sounds like a plausible reason for my own only concern with the issue...if it was an error on BY's part, why didn't it get corrected earlier when David O McKay and others wanted to correct it.

Enjoy! David O. McKay and the Priesthood Ban