This was originally posted at Mormon Matters.
What is happening to the financial affairs of the FLDS right now seems completely inexplicable, but I need to try to understand what is going on. And it seems to me to behoove every citizen of the United States to do the same.
This is going to be a vastly simplified version of events, as I understand them:
Since I didn't get my Pioneer Day fix in Sacrament Meeting this year, you'll have to indulge me as I commemorate the violently beautiful journey taken by a misunderstood and tragic people in 1847 through the 1870's. I tend to internalize the lessons that Pioneer Day teaches in a way that is truly amazing. The Mormon Pioneers are deeply symbolic to me and their stories resonate with some longing deep inside my soul. Here's a new one for me, told by Lydia Ann Lake Nelson. She crossed the plains with her family in 1850, when she was 18 years old:
I've got a bunch of excited kids around tonight, wearing their homemade stenciled "HP" shirts and getting ready to go to the midnight showing of Harry Potter. And it's got me thinking about the role of fantasy and the magic world view in the lives of Mormons.
Bloggernacle aficionados have been trying to define our little corner of the internet for years now. Everyone has a vague idea of what the term encompasses, and some stand ready to provide a concise definition, but it somehow resists pinning down. In this way, the bloggernacle is quite like Mormon doctrine* itself.
On Wednesday, John Hamer at BCC put up a post about the Thomas B. Marsh strippings of milk story. This is one with which most members of the Church are familiar, as it is often used to illustrate the folly of apostatizing from the Church over a trifle. John cautions:
"Thus, while the moral the Thomas B. Marsh fable, i.e., that faith can be shattered over something inconsequential, is true enough, it would probably make sense to tell a different, more appropriate fable to illustrate that moral."
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