It is one of my favorite topics as of late and it came up again in the extended debate that has been going on in my last several posts about revelation: God and his prophets want the church to be a Nation of Prophets. (more…)

I love to read and I have since I was a tiny girl. Now wait a minute, I’m not going to bore you with how fabulous and intellectual I am. That’s not what this post is about. I must confess that mostly what I like to read is what a friend of mine refers to as “mind candy”. I just can’t help myself, I’m an addict. For those of you who are beginning to worry about the state of my brain now, don’t, I try to throw in a classic as often as I can. If it will make you feel any better about me and this post John Steinbeck happens to be my very favorite author. (more…)

When it comes to describing the process by which prophets receive visions and experience encounters with Celestial visitors, Paul said it best:

“whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth”.

As the second installment of this series on properly judging revelation I will make the boldest assertion of this series: I believe that the vast majority of revelations we read about in scripture were not physical in an earthly sense. While I am certain that they were very real and concrete in one sense, I strongly suspect that if we had video recordings of these visitations and visions all we would see is a prophet alone. (more…)

There were some very interesting challenges and questions posed to me in the comments of my last post but since I was on vacation last week I did not have time to respond to them sufficiently. Now that we are back I thought the general subject was important enough to warrant its own set of posts. Jeffrey Giliam made the most provocative comments there and his comments are in line with other views he has expressed elsewhere. Our disagreement centers on how to judge the quality of revelation from God. Before I directly respond to those comments I thought it would be wise to lay a foundation for my responses. In this first post I will respond to a list Jeffrey published where he delineates what he sees as the differences between “revelation” and “inspiration” from God. Here is the hierarchy he presents ranked from least impressive to most impressive (he calls 1-3 inspiration and 4-7 revelation): (more…)

I have recently made a huge discovery. I have figured out the cause of all that is wrong with America today. Are you ready…it’s Costco! Really, let me make my case and I think you will agree with me.

Let’s discuss some of the problems that face the USA. First, we are told day after day that Americans are fat, fatter than they’ve ever been. Second, kindness is in short supply. We hear about road rage and neighbors fighting with each other. Third, there are too many children born out of wedlock. Ok, let’s start with these three reasons. I know there are plenty more but we don’t have that much time. Now let me tell you why Costco is the reason we are dealing with these problems. (more…)

J. Stapley put up an excellent post the other day asking “Why would prophets leave revelations unwritten?” In it he outlined the sacred visitation President Lorenzo Snow had in the Salt Lake temple from the Lord Jesus Christ. In that interview the Lord gave President Snow very clear and explicit instructions regarding the reorganization of the first presidency. But President Snow never wrote this experience down or shared it with the whole church. We only have knowledge of it because he told some of his descendants of the story and long after his death they revealed it to the church at large. The question is: Why did he choose to keep this experience to himself? (more…)

In the Fall of ’91 I was freshly home from my mission and a transfer student at BYU. I had a couple of items high on my list of priorities: One was to find a smart, funny, gorgeous girlfriend and the other was to start a rock band. (The latter presumably would add to the success of the former.) I succeeded at both by my first month. You know the hottie girlfriend I found as Kristen J and the band I started was called Sam I Am. (more…)

I just bought 72 glasses for $5. Yeah, you heard me, 72 GLASSES-FIVE DOLLARS! Ok, they have Spaghetti Palace written on them and red, white, and green stripes circling the top but they were only 7 cents each. How can you beat that? If you haven’t guessed, I love bargains. It’s not necessarily a good thing with me it’s probably more like a crazy thing. As I’ve said before, we all have our “special needs”. (more…)

7 There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes;
8 We cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified we shall see that it is all matter.
(D&C 131:7-8)

In Mormonism we believe all will be resurrected in to physical bodies. Such resurrected beings have to live somewhere in the physical Universe. Where do you suppose that will be? (more…)

Earlier in the year my 3 year old son almost died. My husband and I wrote several posts on it at the time so I’m sure some of you know what I’m talking about. For those of you who don’t; my son fell into our pool during a pool party unnoticed by me or the other parent watching. The timing is unknown but not long after he fell in I got a huge prompting to look for my son. Geoff heard my calls for Quinn and ran out to the pool where he saw him floating face down. He pulled him out, we did CPR on him and he was then flown in a helicopter to the Pediatric NICU at a local hospital. He made a full recovery in a very short time, was released to come home, and has since lived a very normal 3 year old boy kind of life (except now he is an awesome swimmer). (more…)

I’ve been planning to report on how my gig in San Diego went, but I was sort of looking for an angle. When Jeffrey Giliam questioned the reason we have to go through a veil of forgetfulness when we come to earth in the comments of another post I decided I might try to kill two birds with one stone. (more…)