Calm

I find this reasoning in this day and age unrealistic. It was different when an armed citizenry was somewhat comparable to the military. While there may be tons more privately owned small arms than military small arms, the potential for drone strikes, tanks, bombs from unreachable by guns locations, etc these days and just the sheer mass of the military’s fire power, at best you’ll get a symbolic standoff with likely a lot of innocent bystanders not choosing to be there caught up getting massacred along with the freedom fighters. I find it much more sensible to invest your money and time in creating a culture that won’t elect a government that considered armed response against their citizens as an option. PS: I wonder if he actually read the Narnia books. The opening book was dealing with an armed rebellion against a tyrant. Other books deal with unjust government, etc. Though maybe that is what he meant by CS Lewis being smart…though if so, why did he use Narnia as an example in the first place?

Does he look really young to you? I get they need to do this, but I worry about the people who look like him.

You and my daughter! Must be a liberal thing.

If someone has gotten to the point they think taking out a political celebrity in public (or private) is a good idea, I am willing to grant them all sorts of stupidness. Bet you filmmakers are already imagining how they would play it. Good way to maximize his notoriety. If they catch him, he might claim that’s what he did even if he didn’t, so I don’t think we will ever know.

My guess is the shooter was anticipating similar comments, listening in to choose his moment.

If it’s an isolated shooter, it’s a different motivation than organized terrorism using intimidation tactics. Imo, lone shooters want to promote noise…mostly about themselves, they enjoy the battle. I am not suggesting you not speak up. I just don’t see why it likely matters in this case. If it is an organized movement or the shooter is actually attempting to intimidate other speakers and not just a loner, I have no problem saying I am wrong.

So it was not someone in the front rows as suspected. I wonder how this will affect future outdoor events in the quad.

And how will that help?

My grandson was there with friends. Haven’t talked to him yet, just exchanged “I love you” texts. What do you say to someone who witnesses a murder? My husband is sick at heart (retired UVU professor, now bus driver for sports teams for fun). Pissed off the event wasn’t inside with more security. Apparently it was a student club thing and not a university admin/faculty planned event, so they held it in the quad. Too unreal for me to even process. A high school in my sister’s (she just retired full time teaching last year, still subs a lot) school district in the Denver area had four students injured in a shooting, two critically with gunshot wounds, one of them is the shooter. Another sustained injury while fleeing and a third it’s unknown from the article I read. https://www.cpr.org/2025/09/10/evergreen-high-school-shooting/ Bizarre that three of my near and dear are so impacted on the same day. What the hell is going on? Added: it happened in Colorado during lunchtime and the kids didn’t know what to do. Looks like drills during lunchtime will now be added to our youths’ every day lives. https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/shooting-evergreen-high-school-denver-metro-area/

It comes across as manipulation to me, as in ‘I am going to look like the cooperative one so no one can complain about me since I can depend on others to pressure them into agreeing to what I want; I bet those guys want to be liked enough that it’s not a risk to not insist on my way when I have the opportunity to do so’ and then he eggs on the negative.

Apologies if this doesn’t help clarify what I meant, I am rather out of it today… I don’t mean we can’t understand anything God communicates, we understand a lot of things just as we do with each other. I mean we will get stuff wrong at times. For some, it may be pretty minimal and trivial, then there are those who rarely get it right for whatever reason (it may not be their character, but their upbringing); others may only on occasion get stuff wrong but sometimes it’s major because of the incorrect context they place the message in…such as the Priesthood Ban. I do believe there was likely revelation about being cautious teaching blacks, likely the one for slaves (Sec 134) to avoid them being punished, sold into a worse situation, or even killed by their enslavers (it is hard to write “owners”, just too wrong when attached to people) that got placed for Brigham Young in the greater context of prejudice in general and specifically towards interracial children. I believe he had a basic idea and kept attaching more and more conditions to it, broadening the context of actual revelation so far he felt justified in excluding blacks from the temple in order to prevent interracial marriage, whether he formulated it that way to himself or not. Then other leaders took his confidence in his belief as resulting from revelation instead of reasoning and the Ban was solidified in people’s minds as revelation…without too much resistance because at the time there were few blacks as members of the Church or living in areas where the majority of members were in. A generation or two and few think to even question it. I guess my biggest point is I don’t believe God will force understanding. He only uses the opportunities that we give to him to teach us. And sometimes that can look from the outside quite differently than from the inside. The apparently humble, usually spiritual man could have a rigidness when it comes to a particular idea, he won’t understand no matter what because he’s not ready to change. Jonah as described was apparently in my view a decent guy except when it came to Nineveh as he was willing to risk death for the strangers he was sailing with by telling them to sacrifice him to survive. Even after he accepted some of God’s message, he didn’t process it all. He was shocked God didn’t punish Nineveh after they repented. Or that same humble man may want so much to be justified in a belief, he attaches other things to what is revelation, inflating application. Someone doing evil looks like he’s bound for hell, but he doubts himself and thus is open to the Spirit and maybe God even chooses to shout at him like he did with Alma the Younger. Alma for whatever reason was willing to change when God used shock treatment. Laman and Lemuel weren’t, even though they look to me as if they had as much evidence given to them of God’s power and blessings as anyone has. They appeared too focused on selfish desires for personal authority (‘usurped’ by their younger brother) and possibly comfort (resenting God for placing them in a position where they had to flee the good life, being sons of Lehi as in their culture and many other tribal cultures, family paid for the ‘sins’ of other family members, even if they stuck around, their business likely would have tanked as their family would be ostracized even if they were decent businessmen and not depending on daddy).

Certainly not if done privately. Publicly however, which means part of it is to make a statement, then yes, disrespectful. I don’t see disrespect as always wrong or bad though. If Grenfell seriously believes she is helping people by being disrespectful to an organization she believes hurts people more than it helps, I don’t judge her actions as wrong or bad, but misguided. Now WSJ…seems to me that is about making money more than anything else because first, they aren’t making a stand openly that the Church is harming people even if there is a good chance that reporter believes it so they are trying to have their cake (trash the Church) and eat it too (claiming unbiased, respectful reporting) plus there is the whole lying about the Church cooperating with them, so I do criticize them for making those choices.

Seems to be a pattern here. I wonder if he does this for other issues. From your previous post…

I second that.

One of the people interviewed for the article expresses her opinion of the result. She shares the reporter claimed the Church was cooperating with the Journalist for the article when the reality was they declined to comment. https://www.facebook.com/reel/1401535104280653

I assume this is the study they refer to in the article, but where to find the info? https://tischcollege.tufts.edu/research-faculty/research-centers/cooperative-election-study Given the background, seems quite credible. So far the only thing I found from them is too generic: https://tischcollege.tufts.edu/research-faculty/research-centers/cooperative-election-study

Having read the WSJ article several things left me dissatisfied. They refer to “some insiders” but there is no hint of how they qualify as insiders. Are they in any position to actually know stuff or just sharing rumors? Justin Turman….I have spent some effort trying to find his background in hopes of finding out his methodology. Can’t find anything online about him that is not repeating the article. Why not share some credentials/background like they did with the others mentioned (except for “some insiders”) instead of just dropping a name and a claim. They have made it impossible to verify or even guess about the claims. Are we supposed to take then on trust? They mention several who were influenced by Grenfell’s videos. She said she started in 2023. One of the persons mentioned says she saw Grenfell’s videos when she was 18, so she (Hughes) was likely born in 2005. Given that I find her description of herself rather unusual (just the bolded part, I have no trouble believing the second part of the sentence or anything else). It is written imo to imply part of her struggle was her lack of awareness of homosexuality at all and given the context one can easily infer the fault for that lack of info is her “intensely Mormon community”. She says she avoided social media, but not TV, the news, school, etc.. She would have been 10 years of age when gay marriage was legalized. I am baffled unless by years she means “preschool years”….unless there are some Utah communities that are much more isolated than any I have experienced over the decades (I may have mentioned it before, but for four months in 1969 iirc in 6th grade I lived in Utah, went to Farrer Middle School and that is where I first heard what I used to consider top tier swear words and taunting accusing someone of being gay…using a more derogatory word, of course; it came primarily from one young man, but there were a few others…mostly likely in rebellion, quite the cliche looking back; the music teacher there also exposed me to my first rock opera, Tommy, which we studied in depth including talking about drugs, sex, and abuse…just realized it had been released the previous spring, she was quite cutting edge).

What the purpose for the WSJ reporting on this now? Anyone know? Slow news day? LDS are in the news again for some reason? ExLDS having their moment now?

Is there any reason to assume divine communication should be better than human to human communication? I would say no because half of the equation is still human. Even if we get it right in the moment, with the way our minds work, the message is going to get quickly garbled to some extent if it’s complicated at all, especially with the human tendency to second guess, fill in the gaps, jump to conclusions, etc. Clear communication will not guarantee that not happening either; I have seen exceedingly clear communication that still results in two people walking away with two different sets of expectations (though with significant overlap as well). It would require God stepping in and suppressing certain thought processes/habits, imo, and that would decrease our agency…which God apparently refuses to do himself even though it seems obvious to me that he allows it to be done constantly to us by other humans as well as the natural circumstances of mortality which automatically shuts down most of our agency through limitations of the physical brain as well as limited access to accurate information combined with extensive exposure to inaccurate information as well as limited ability for comprehension of either… The lack of perfect or even above average quality of communication between man and God seems to me to be easily understood as a natural condition of mortality. So why would we expect anyone to achieve that point? The problem as I see it comes in when communication with God appears to be more garbled than what we have with each other due to the method of communication, as in it’s all internal and therefore unable to record without interpretation, etc.. So why does God choose that channel knowing the difficulty to verify? This is what I am interested in. If even one of the best and brightest in God’s actual presence still managed to screw up his own understanding and interpretation of God’s message, rewrite it in his head up to the point he ended up hating God when he could talk to God face to face due to arrogance and pride and other personal qualities, it should hardly be surprising that it happens at times to the rest of us given we are so messed up in self awareness due to our minimal awareness of what’s happening in our own brains and bodies, what’s influencing our thoughts, distracting us, preventing us from registering what we would prefer to register, etc…. though usually with much less dramatic consequences than what happened to Lucifer (assuming his story is not only real and not just symbolic, but told semiaccurately though extremely simplistically, without much detail). To me, knowing this (“they thought they were speaking God's will because they actually claimed to be doing that”) happens is troubling, but it is also reassuring. It tells me how important we as actual individuals are to God, he is not going to interfere to make things work out the way he wants in such a way that we lose our self; iow, he won’t impose his will upon us, turning us into his puppets doing or saying just what he wants us to say or do even if it’s very, very important for us to understand and do something. It seems to be a line he won’t cross, no matter the consequences and my guess is there are a lot of parents out there who would do just that, would love to do it, and would convince themselves it was for the good of their child even without really caring the child would no longer be purely their own self, but a creature of their parents’ design. Since I don’t want myself or anyone else to turn into God’s robots** even for a second in some minimal way*** the cost does not seem too high to me****. **what’s the purpose of existence if we aren’t living as fully ourselves? There is something absolutely gut wrenching repulsive about that idea to me. It’s bad enough we can’t control the things that influence us and most of the time we don’t even realize they’re there. Going further, having someone stick their fingers into our brains and move the wiring around to please themselves is disgusting even if these bodies are temporary, disposable shells that will be upgraded substantially come the resurrection. Having it done to our minds/spirits, our eternal selves is too wrong to contemplate for very long. Makes me ill. ***all of mortality is so minute in comparison to the eternities before and the eternities after, if God is going to justify controlling us by ‘it’s such a little nudge’, why wouldn’t he feel comfortable with programming our whole mortal life? ****only because I trust God can undo all the harm caused by screwed up communication eventually and still get us to a place of joy of course

I am finding it difficult to visualize what you mean by “contained” since we currently teach our spirit bodies match our physical bodies. Are you suggesting overtime our spirit bodies evolved and therefore needed new physical bodies to contain them, moving up in complexity from light to animals, finally human physical forms?

I would agree to the above if phrased as “indication that something in our current network is possibly inconsistent and wrong”. We may be erring in doubting something, after all.

https://www.npr.org/2025/06/05/nx-s1-5424445/supreme-court-catholic-charities-wisconsin-unemployment-compensation Anyone with info on the case? It seems odd that religious groups don’t have to pay unemployment tax to me. Is the rationale no taxes at all can be required? Seems like religious groups could opt out of paying SS in general as well and not just as individual or organization conscientious objectors*** since the unemployment tax is for covering unemployment government benefits and I don’t see much difference with retirement benefits. Are there any safeguards included to ensure the employee gets enough income to pay for insurance for unemployment or retirement themselves if they want to? ***this info is from a quick search as I had no relevant knowledge on the subject. What, if anything, is absolutely required from religious organizations to the government money wise?

For those thinking or planning on attending this year, early bird pricing is good till May 1st (sorry for being a bit slow getting this up here, missed it completely last year iirc). We have gone back to two days to make it easier to attend, but have multiple tracks (if I understand correctly) to cover the large number of topics. I don’t have any other details yet…you may want to use social media as the more efficient way to track announcements. https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/conference https://www.facebook.com/fairlatterdaysaints/posts/pfbid02jbEZ5CfmoX56hZqSGaLVyxVQfq4FQEV4ZNhn25PyxXFrhTBsXPLNcHiRzKz5gjfGl https://www.instagram.com/valiantconference/p/C5pIh17xYcB/?img_index=1

https://www.kcra.com/article/idaho-mormon-church-child-sex-abuse-claims/46022043 https://apnews.com/article/mormon-church-investigation-child-sex-abuse-4db829616a5c5cfa351a2e95d778ae9e This is from the reporter who wasn’t great with details from the Adams case, so I would urge caution until we have other confirming sources. Lights out for me, so dissection comes tomorrow…though thinking Smac and others will get there first.

Jury selection for the first trial has started. No cameras in court. These are the two top reporters on this Imo, been devoting lots of up close attention from the beginning… Justin Lum (Arizona) is providing details here; https://m.facebook.com/jlumfox10 day one: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid02T3B9DtxDNgRyHzUKhqpBKpWRdCimVok7jMNSrQ8JPtSzD8zm7dv4zn1PLz2BkW8Nl&id=100044424966565 Eaat Idaho News (usually Nate Eaton) here: https://www.eastidahonews.com/2023/04/jury-selection-begins-on-first-day-of-lori-vallow-daybell-murder-trial-day-one/