Thursday, October 2, 2008

Blog of the Month





Some of my readers might be surprised at the blog I am showcasing as the Blog of the Month for September. It certainly comes from a much more conservative viewpoint than what I am likely to espouse. But I have been fascinated by this blog and I think you will be, too. It's called:





LDS Women of God




The LDS Women of God blog is written by Jan Tolman out of Utah. She has felt a calling to bind the Relief Society sisters together through blogging. "I have decided to see what I can do to unite our sisterhood. It may work, it may not," she declares. And there are places where this blog works. One of Jan's posts asks the question, Is Your Relief Society A Safe Place? It's just a short, simple exhortation to strengthen the sisters in their weakness, with a couple of touching illustrations of women modeling this behavior.

A great strength in this blog is Jan's use of historical vignettes to unite her readers with the LDS women in our faith tradition. A biographical sketch of Sarah Granger Kimball speaks of her testimony and service. We are given a glimpse of home industry in Utah in the article Mormon Handicraft, and the Exponent magazine is quoted regarding modesty in 1873. Jan has a knack for relating these historical moments with our challenges today.

I appreciated the mini-Hebrew lessons, of which there were three during the month of September (1, 2, 3), giving insights on male and female forms of the number one, and Adam and Eve. (Peek back to August for a look at the destiny of man and women as symbolically depicted in Hebrew!)

I encourage my readers to visit LDS Women of God to read more about Enrichment ideas, family history, journaling, organization, missionary work, food storage, finances, and sisterhood, all from a woman's perspective. My one caution is that Jan's political views might not fit with her desire to unite women, but surely they reflect the mainstream position much better than I do here on Hieing to Kolob.

3 comments:

SilverRain said...

Out of curiosity, could you elaborate on "Jan's political views might not fit with her desire to unite women"?

Bored in Vernal said...

SR, In her post on Proposition 8, Jan says, "By voting FOR the Proposition, you are demanding that the law be changed back to what it should be. It seems that when no one was looking, some liberal judges were sneaky and changed the law about marriage rights. This Proposition will put the law back into place." She then makes a distinction between RIGHTEOUS people who vote for the Proposition, and the unrighteous who oppose it.

In my opinion, not all "righteous" LDS women agree that the Proposition is legal. Had this Proposition been in place in the early days of the Church, it would have kept righteous Latter-day Saints from living the principle of celestial marriage. I will not attempt to defend my position further, except to say that if our goal is to unite LDS women, perhaps it would be better to say something like: Mormon women should study the issues carefully and vote their conscience. Here are the things I have studied and why I believe the way I do. A statement like that is fundamentally different than saying ALL RIGHTEOUS people will take a particular political position.

SilverRain said...

Thank you for the clarification!