We last heard from Mary while she was living in Jerusalem, and we’re excited to welcome back her insights as we round out the year. In addition to her stint in Jerusalem, Mary has lived on the east coast and overseas in England—though she’s a Utah native and currently resides in Utah Valley with her husband and children. She’s an avid reader, a committed student of the gospel and religious studies more broadly, and has spent a number of years teaching both seminary and institute. Welcome back Mary!
Author: James Olsen
James is the husband of Erin Fairlight Olsen. Together they have conspired to doom their four children to a lifetime of mispronounced names: Gaebriel Joseph, Magdeleine Ysabelle, Myriam Reevkahleh, and Ewa Nuhr. Raised where the buffalo still roam in northeastern Wyoming, James learned how to Anglicize French while serving in the Missouri, St. Louis Mission. Afterward he thought so long and indecisively and with such passionately committed existential anguish about what to do with his life that finally BYU simply granted him a degree in philosophy. He then received a Master of Arts degree in International Affairs from George Washington University. Unable to subsequently handle the pressures of looming heteronormativity, however, he once again took up philosophy, this time at Georgetown. Currently he is in Doha, Qatar, hiding out from Georgetown, which, much like his wife, would really appreciate it if he just graduated.
Muslim-Mormon Dialogue at Georgetown: The Perks of Being Peculiar
I know that I am a better Mormon on account of Muslim friends and hope that they will be able to say the same of me.
Book Review — Where We Must Stand: Ten Years of Feminist Mormon Housewives
reading and reviewing this book was a weighty experience for me, just as participating in FMH has been a weighty experience for its authors and many of its participants; and some of that weight shows up here
Times & Season Welcomes Mary Grey
Times and Seasons is excited to welcome our newest guest blogger, Mary E. Grey, who will be writing a series of posts from her current home in Jerusalem.
Messianism as Ethical Futurism – Reading Nephi – 19:7-17
Nephi’s eclectic messianism can be read as prophesying an ethical futurism.
Engraving a Record, Engraving a People – Reading Nephi – 19:1-6
All my life I’ve imagined the Book of Lehi—those tragically lost 116 pages—as having been written by Lehi. But the Book of Lehi was engraven on plates
What’s in a Name? – Reading Nephi – 18:23-19:1
This post is part of a series of reflections on I Nephi. If you’re interested, the introduction to the series is here. To peruse earlier entries, click the authors tab at the top of the page and then click on my name. I welcome your own thoughts on these specific verses (or on my reflections) in the comments below. * * * * I Nephi 18:23-19:1 They arrive at the promised land. They pitch their tents. I can’t help but picture elation and Hollywood scenes of the family kneeling to kiss wet sand as water rolls over their feet. They made it! Now what? At the end of years of travel, when one finally reaches one’s destination, what does one do? As Nephi goes on to note, they’re in a new land with new flora and fauna and resources—but a land of which they’ve zero knowledge. Particularly when it comes to survival, local knowledge is everything. I imagine a profound funk of “what now?” hung over them. After more than eight years, are they simply to stop? Do they stop and build right on the coast? Do they look around for a fertile valley? Do they have to try and find an uninhabited location? Are they sure that God doesn’t want them to continue on further into the wilderness? Nephi makes no comment about these decisions and does not mention revelation here. It’s unclear that the Liahona—so integral to their ocean voyage—could…
Failed Revolutions and Failed Patriarchs – Reading Nephi – 18:17-22
This post is part of a series of reflections on I Nephi. If you’re interested, the introduction to the series is here. To peruse earlier entries, click the authors tab at the top of the page and then click on my name. I welcome your own thoughts on these specific verses (or on my reflections) in the comments below. * * * * I Nephi 18:17-22 Above all, this passage reveals the deep hypocrisy of Laman. In verse ten Laman is the adamant defender of tradition and the cultural norms that ought to govern our lives—he refuses to accept rule from a usurping younger brother. In verse seventeen and eighteen, however, he has no compunction with regard to deposing the patriarchal rule of his father—a far greater infraction of tradition. Even more, he shirks the duty of the firstborn to care for the parents in their old age; quite the opposite, he creates conditions that bring his parents to the point of death and refuses to alter course when this becomes clear. Even taking Nephi’s account with a grain of salt, it’s hard to imagine a scenario here where Laman doesn’t come off very poorly.\ Part of the function of this passage is to reveal the utter ungovernability of Laman. It’s not just that he won’t submit to Nephi, a younger, usurping brother; it’s that he won’t submit to any form of authority, any of the cultural norms and constraints—Laman is refusing…
Flourishing Amidst the Storm – Reading Nephi – 18:9-16
Murmuring undermines one’s relationship with God and one’s ability to cope either with the storms of the cosmos or the wounds inflicted by our family members.
Driven Towards the Promised Land – Reading Nephi – 18:1-8
“And they did worship the Lord”—that’s the conclusion to the whole row. I wonder at it. What was the change?
Win the Battle, Lose the War – Reading Nephi – 17:48-55
The eternal cosmological drama in which we’re embedded demands that we work to reflect the divinity of our enemies back to them if we wish them to join with us in our Zionic alliance of apotheosis. And whether we do, that is what we ought to wish.
The Children of Israel – Reading Nephi – 17:23-47 – Part II
This is a powerful ethic. I feel its pull deeply. But there is a second half, a dark side
Mythology, Apology, and Plausibility – Reading Nephi – 17:23-47 – Overview
In mythically promoting our history we risk undermining it—at least we do so in today’s information age. But this chapter with Laman and Nephi sparring makes me think that perhaps this is always the case.
God’s Demand That We Suffer – Reading Nephi – 17:17-22
I don’t care what kind of faith you have, Nephi’s idea on the face of it is loony.
The Narrative of Divine Command – Reading Nephi – 17:13-15
Two remarkable items: the repetition of Nephi’s mantra concerning the need to keep the commandments of God in order to prosper and to see the hand of the Lord; the placement of this mantra immediately preceding Laman’s criticism.
Embodied Spirituality – Reading Nephi – 17:7-12
In passages like this one, Nephi strikes me as incredibly concrete and practical in nature—much more a Brigham Young than a Joseph Smith.
The Fleeting Joy of Bountiful – Reading Nephi – 17:4-6
Like the story of Moses (to which Nephi often refers) the story of Lehi’s & Saraiah’s exodus is epic and foundational, as well as typological.
Eight Years to Eternity in the Wilderness – Reading Nephi – 17:1-4
Sandwiched in between the Daughter’s of Ishmael’s complaints about their afflictions and Laman’s complaints about the women’s afflictions (16:35-36 and 17:20-21), Nephi acknowledges that they were indeed afflicted.
Mourning Brother Monson
One of the clearest signals of being one of the Mormon people is our unique experience of the passing of the head of our church.
God’s Favor and Human Arrogance and Contempt – Reading Nephi – 16:33-39
Perhaps I ought to be grateful that no such crisis demanding the voice of the Lord has come into my life. Or perhaps I should wonder at the silence of the heavens.
A note on my Reading Nephi series and scriptural interpretation generally
It’s hard for us, as humans, to pry apart the empirical from the normative—and for good reasons. Facts don’t come to us bare of value. Especially with regard to those facts that we appreciate and evaluate in existential contexts (i.e., contexts related to our identity and overall worldview), they always already appear normatively laden (i.e., as meaning something). At least as a pragmatic matter, bare facts are secondary abstractions (whatever metaphysical status we ultimately attribute to them). Nephi certainly saw Laman & Co. as acting in ways that had specific meaning and bearing, and I’m convinced that he saw his written record as likewise bearing an unavoidable upshot (this gets noted briefly in chapter 6 and becomes abundantly clear when we get to II Nephi 25). Similarly, we (all) do the same thing when we read commentary on the scriptures. Textual artifacts don’t simply get picked out—rather, the ways in which we pick combines with the social context in which we’re picking, and the picked artifacts’ display already has meaning (however neutral the language doing the displaying). In a public context like Times and Seasons, there are different, sometimes competing contexts, approaches to, and projects with regard to the scriptures. Consequently, a narrative that is candid about textual details is inevitably going to appear at least somewhat differently to different readers. [FN 1] For example, it’s an empirical fact of the text that Nephi only discusses Laman & Co. in…
Mysteries of a Diachronic Narrative – Reading Nephi – 16:26-32
Why did everyone tremble when they looked on the Liahona?
Faithful vs. Secular Murmuring – Reading Nephi – 16:17-25
I can’t help but picture the women pregnant, nearing full-term. Nephi rarely mentions the women or their condition, but this strikes me as likely, almost a certainty; particularly when considering Sariah’s age.
Wilderness Starvation – Reading Nephi – 16:12-17
Food is a huge issue for Nephi. I’m tempted to add up the verses that account for the eight years between the Valley of Lemuel and Bountiful and divide them by the number of verses speaking about food. Quantitatively and qualitatively, this is the issue—in a way that it isn’t and really could never be for most of us.
Exodus in Earnest – Reading Nephi – 16:9-11
Would we have the Book of Mormon if Lehi had not ignored Jeremiah’s jeremiad and embraced his dreams? Even so, can you imagine—honestly—forsaking your home and property, putting your wife and children (and grandchildren?) in significant jeopardy over a dream?
Marriage as Pivot Point – Reading Nephi – 16:7-8
There are times when the androcentric nature of the Book of Mormon is stark and unavoidable. These verses are rough.
Different Hardnesses to the Truth – Reading Nephi – 16:1-6
My typical reaction in reading this vision (or, as more often is the case, segments of the vision) and Nephi’s sermonizing and exhortations is to rejoice. This confrontation Nephi has with Laman (et al) pulls me up short, though.
The Filthy Waters of Life – Reading Nephi – 15:21-36 part II
Three more quick points: first, the tree is no longer merely metaphorically or symbolically, but now explicitly made to be the Tree of Life.
Nephi as King and Nephi as Brother – Reading Nephi – 15:21-36 part I
I … see two differenet Nephi’s in this passage, and I’m not sure which is more accurate.
A New (and Everlasting) Covenant – Reading Nephi – 15:12-20
I suspect that his brothers’ lack of understanding had less to do with their inability to grasp our simplistic Sunday School summary of the allegory of the olive tree, and much more to do with how culturally and theologically “other” this picture was compared to their own understanding.