First, the BYU men’s basketball team scored 110 points in their victory over Nevada today. Jimmer dropped 33 on the Wolfpack alone. The only problem is the Cougs gave up 104 points in the victory. But a win is a win and Nevada is a solid program. BYU is now 11-1 and plays Nebraska tomorrow. If they win that one don’t be surprised if the Cougs crack the top 25 this week.

Ok, on to the other BYU game. At halftime of the Las Vegas Bowl BYU leads Oregon State 23-7.

Things looked ugly at first. With the wind howling at 40 mph in the face of BYU the offense was getting no where and then OSU scored a touchdown that looked way too easy. But BYU suddenly gathered themselves and marched 80 yards down the field directly into the head wind to score a tying touchdown. Right after that the wheels started coming off for The Beavers. First a backwards pass was dropped and BYU scooped it up for a TD. In the second quarter OSU was facing the wind and had two punts go all of 6 yards. Plus OSU got several penalties that helped BYU. The result was another BYU touchdown and field goal. I’m pleasantly surprised at how well things are going at the half. I’ll live blog the rest of the game: (more…)

About three years ago I was listening to a Sunstone Symposium recording (a “Pillars of my Faith” talk) given by John Kesler where he talked about his conversion to the gospel after being an atheist for quite a while. He also mentioned that later in his life as a member of the church he started meditating with a Zen Buddhist which led him to feel incredible love and connection with God, which has also allowed him to occasionally hear God’s voice. He also described the experience as training one’s thoughts and gaining self mastery. As a result, I was intrigued with the concept of meditation as a spiritual practice and decided to look into it some more.

I found out that meditation is a part (or has been a part) of the spiritual practice of Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, etc. for thousands of years. I started paying attention to the use of the word meditation in the correlated materials and the word is often used in conjunction with prayer, scripture study, and fasting as a means to feeling God’s presence and experiencing personal revelation. However, the context that I believe most Mormons use the word is often synonymous with the concept of pondering, or thinking deeply about something; rather than as a systematic mental exercise. The spiritual practice of meditation in other traditions seems to be somewhat different than what I think Mormons do (though it may still be parallel in some regards).
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Since my Sista’ in Zion is dissing on Sheri’s little company over at T&S, I thought I’d give them some love. It is Christmas after all, and even Ms. Dew needs love at Christmas. So, in no particular order, here are the 10 books I have read the most that are published by Deseret Book.

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There have been rumors circulating in recent months that the threefold mission of the church that became part of Mormonism under President Kimball (Proclaim the Gospel, Perfect the Saints, Redeem the Dead) was going to be expanded to include something about caring for the poor and needy. It now appears those rumors were accurate. We get this from Peggy Fletcher Stack’s article on the subject today:

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.

This mission first was coined by late LDS President Spencer W. Kimball in the 1980s and since then has been repeated as a mantra by the church’s more than 13 million members.

The new group of phrases will be described as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ “purposes,” rather than missions, and will be spelled out in the next edition of the LDS Church Handbook of Instructions , due out next year, church spokesman Scott Trotter confirmed this week.

I like it. A lot.

Among the most radical teachings of Joseph Smith was his flat rejection of creatio ex nihilo — the idea that a beginningless God created all else that exists out of nothing. By rejecting creatio ex nihilo Joseph opened a world of theological and cosmological possibilities that are precluded from the creedal Christians who accept creation out of nothing as a foundational believe. One of the the theoretical possibilities is an idea I am labeling “radical universalism”.

Here are some of the theological assumptions that would underlie a radically universalistic cosmology:

A. God is beginningless

The scriptures that support the idea of a beginningless God plentiful so one might think that this is an uncontroversial assumption. However in some of our past discussions Mark D. and others have argued that while the rudimentary parts of God are beginningless it is possible that there was a time before there was a fully formed God. While I entertained this idea in the past I currently believe the scriptural support for the claim there never was a time before God is stronger.

B. The One God is a union of multiple divine persons
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Utah was atop yet another list of happiest states in the USA.

I’ll bet that really chaps the hides of critics and enemies of Mormonism. For some reason that makes me happy (and I don’t even live in Utah).

The game came down to the wire again this year. As with the ’06 and ’07 games, BYU took care of business in the end. Rock on Cougars.

And for your viewing pleasure, I present the last play of the game:

and of course: (more…)

No, this is about an entirely different global warming scandal. In this 2007 presentation, David Keith lets the cat out of the bag by revealing a cheap, fast, effective solution to global warming which we’ve known about for as long as we’ve been worried about global warming. Yes, you read that right.

Keith is a Canada Research Chair in Energy and the Environment at the University of Calgary and the opposite of a global warming skeptic. He loves conservation so much he is conflicted about telling everyone about the cheap, fast, effective solution to global warming because they may not want to conserve once they know about it. In fact, he cites political correctness as the reason no one discusses this cheap, fast, effective solution. (more…)

The first time I went to the temple was about a month and a half after my baptism. It was the day after Thanksgiving. I had just introduced the girl who had given me the Book of Mormon to my family (from here on, merely the girl). It was odd to me how much better she was at talking to my cousins and aunts and uncles than I was. It turns out that she had a ton more experience dealing with family than I did, as my family only ever got together for Christmas and Thanksgiving, and my brother and I were the ones who snuck off and ignored them. Speaking of my brother, perhaps my most memorable moment of that Thanksgiving was going over to his house with the girl. He opened the door, wearing nothing but his boxers, and thus my normal life was introduced to my new religious life. (more…)

Jacob’s recent post came to mind today in sacrament meeting. With Thanksgiving coming up this week we had a few excellent talks on gratitude. I was struck by how closely the stories of gratitude matched with the idea of synthetic happiness described by Dan Gilbert here. Further, it is striking that this so-called “synthetic happiness” — the state of happiness we can attain when we make peace with not getting what we want — is a form of happiness that is just as real as the “natural happiness” we feel when we do get what we want.

The interesting thing is in all the stories told today the specific method used to arrive at this real form of happiness was to consciously count one’s blessings. In other words, it seems from the stories that more grateful people are more happy people. And if Dan Gilbert is to be believed, the kind of happiness we can arrive at after not getting what we want is just as “happy” as the kind of happiness we arrive at after getting what we want.

So count your many blessings folks. Name them one by one. According to Lehi the purpose of life is to have joy, and being grateful may be the most sure-fire way to be joyful.

The football team took down AFA fairly easily today. Utah is next.

Also the men’s basketball team overwhelmed Hawaii last night and moved to 3-0.