Last week I took a group of teacher education students to one of our local marae. Marae are uniquely Māori places which usually consist of a meeting house featuring ornate curve linear carvings that tell stories of ancestors and their alliances. Many marae have painted kowhaiwhai and weaved tukutuku (Google it) and are aesthetically unique [...]
What ever happened to Hagoth?
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The kind of Mormon I want my children to be
I love LDS teens and young adults. These days, around here at least, they seem to be good kids trying to follow the pattern of the church in attending seminary and institute, enrolling in higher education, planning for missions, and thinking about marriage. For the most part they have very, very high personal standards. Unlike [...]
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The Secret Life of Mormon Polygamy
Although controversial, in LDS circles there have been a few Mormon women I know who were utterly captivated by Big Love. While it told us an outlandish story about a clandestine fundamentalist polygamous underground playing happy families somewhere in The Valley it also outed polygamy as a modern possibility. It was an intriguing narrative of [...]
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Could this be a Kiwi Mormon Moment as well?
I remember the day I first wrote the word ‘girl’. I was five years old and in Mrs Brunsden’s Primer Two class at Bamford Primary School. Of course I always knew that I was a girl, but there was something in the writing of it that gripped me so much that to this day I [...]
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Unlatching from the Amerimormon cultural teat
As I gaze on with admiration as my friend Joanna Brookes becomes Mormonism’s media darling in the US I’m both thrilled and excited about this moment in our religious history. Joanna’s love of a faith that we share, combined with her take no prisoners honesty about its complexities, inconsistencies and fractures is a rare compound [...]
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Talking Kiwi Mormonism with TV3
In anticipation of a television interview I gave for TV3′s “The Nation” (airing this weekend), I prepared some answers to the reporters pre-interview questions. Its likely that only a fraction of what I said will make it into the segment so I thought I’d share some of my initial thoughts here. Its also remotely possible that they [...]
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Embodying the Mormon Cultural Turn: A personal reflection
I’ve only been blogging since the beginning of the year but in that time I’ve had hundreds and hundreds of comments from readers. On a regular basis I get messages from well meaning folk who have questions about my level of observance, some gently call me to repent, some have even urged me to leave [...]
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How Southpark changed Mormonism
A couple of weeks ago Joanna Brooks (via Skype) and I gave a public lecture at the University of Canterbury entitled ‘What if Popular Culture Changed Religion?’ in the ‘What if Wednesday’ series. While the title of this post is slightly tongue in cheek, we traced the relationship between Mormonism, the public, and the [...]
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LDS Church HQ announces its Relocation to New Zealand! (Well, not really but…..)
After a one month summer hiatus its time to hit the New Year with more unwanted opinion from the antipodes! What better way to kick 2013 off than with a bit of serious silliness? Sitting around our dinner table last night was our usual contingent of diminutive masculinity, but we were joined by three young [...]
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The New Introduction to Official Declaration Two: It’s just not that satisfying…
I once belonged to a ward where the personality of said ward was defined by a long standing rift between two women, then in their 80’s, who had, decades before, determined that they couldn’t stand the sight of each other. I shall henceforth refer to one of the women as Sister Stick (who was my [...]
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Today church made me sad
I woke up this morning with a sigh. I don’t every morning. But today I did because it’s Sunday, and on Sunday I go to church, and sometimes church makes me sad. But I do recall one wonderful Sunday, when I was about 23. I was volunteering with a local disability support service and [...]
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So you’ve been called to serve a mission in New Zealand! Some insider tips for the Americans
I’ve been travelling over the last three weeks and last night I found myself in Provo with a group of friends when the discussion turned to mission preparation in the context of this wave of new young things who are about to be unleashed, bright eyed, and bushy tailed onto the world. The thing about [...]
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I’d Like to Bear my Testimony that I Know Family Home Evening is True.
I only recently became sold on the importance of Family Home Evening. Orthodox husband has always been a stickler, and I can’t think of a single week in our entire 20 years of marriage when we haven’t had Family Home Evening. It’s been the scene of our funniest moments, such as this four years ago: [Read More...]
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On giving a Sacrament Meeting Talk about Official Declaration Two
On Sunday I was asked to give a sacrament talk on Official Declaration Two, which is the Church’s 1978 statement extending the Priesthood do all ‘worthy males’. The subtext of this declaration was obviously that at one time not all worthy males were eligible for the priesthood with the restriction being placed on those with [Read More...]
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“Church Instructs Leaders on Same-Sex Marriage”– or did it just make a bad situation worse?
Once again the church releases an ‘Official Statement’ that makes the hearts sink. My first thought when I read the latest was, ‘lets watch and see how many members will bail’, and then over the ensuing hours the exit narratives in the social media began; ‘I’ve had enough’, ‘I can’t do this anymore’, ‘I’m out’. [Read More...]
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A Former Bishop’s Doctrinal Dilemmas
GUEST POST: Ganesh Cherian of Wellington, New Zealand is currently a Stake High Counsellor and has served as a bishop for five and a half years. Feel free to address comments to Ganesh on this site or visit his own blog LDS Essays. Last month our Stake Presidency selected President Uchtdorf’s renowned talk ‘Come join [Read More...]
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Reflections after Temple Square: Furious musings from the periphery
Two nights ago there was a men’s dinner at our home. It was Nathan’s birthday celebration and I had offered to cater a sumptuous blokey kind of meal for him and his friends. Friends who included two bishops, one former bishop and former counselor on the Stake Presidency, and one young men’s president and former [Read More...]
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Utah: Where being a brown brother with a pen can cost you your life
Utah has one of the most sizable Pacific Island populations in the United States of America outside of California. In Utah the most significant Pasifika communities are Tongan and Samoan. Where New Zealand and Australia both have substantial Polynesian communities, migration to Utah has had an appeal for Mormons inasmuch as families have seen [Read More...]
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Speaking Confidently of Motherhood Memes
This week some geniuses from the LDS.org meme department published advice to women about how we can better relate with each other. It was in the form of a graphic featuring very young women sustaining three religious directives with their happy smiles: ’Speak Confidently of Motherhood, Speak More Often about Nurturing, Expand your Circle of [Read More...]
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Reflections on the New Zealand Regional Broadcast: Why Censorship is Sometimes Necessary
In the October 2010 General Conference Boyd K. Packer made some controversial remarks. Firstly he claimed that the Proclamation to the Family was a revelation. Then he suggested that homosexuality was not inborn proclaiming; “Some suppose that they were preset and cannot overcome what they feel are inborn tendencies toward the impure and unnatural. Not [Read More...]
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