Chum

I can appreciate that perspective. For my part, I find the "forced {} into existence" difficult to reconcile with my worldview. My phrasing is admittedly pointed. But every way I tried to soften it, it wandered away from the reality that kids face. Which is that they had no say so in getting existed. I strongly believe we have no call to impose a debt on them for that; I feel it shifts the whole circumstance toward unethical territory.

The notion of "kids owing parents" is on the table somewhere here but I'm not ascribing it to you. I think you're maybe exploring the cave it happens to live in. And as long as we're here, I'd like to drag the notion into the sunlight and pummel it a bit.

The debt of using them to fulfill my own purpose and happiness. This works.

That's another interesting thought. What debt do you owe them? I don't know the name of my debt but I pay it by helping them achieve happiness. Secondarily, I strive to encourage my kids to help others achieve happiness (which enriches their world).

This is an interesting thought. Aren't we told that we chose to come to this earth and have a mortal probation? How then is any of us "forced {} into existence?" Even when I was active, I found this an extraordinarily insufficient reasoning. It seems like a super thin justification for imposing life impacting obligations on my kids - particularly obligations that all flow to me. There isn't anything in my experience that supports the notion (that my kids owe me because of the premortal existence).

To be clear, your sentiment is especially honorable. To address the OT sentiment, shouldn't there be a corresponding commandment - or at least shouldn't this one include the two-way obligation? I personally suspect that OT adults more comfortable (than I am) with seeing their children as material.

I've thought about this. But that part of the Gospel is tied to the non-existence of any memory of those events. The notion of holding one accountable to an agreement made in an existence that no one has 1st hand knowledge of - this seems problematic at best. Binding my own children to it doesn't feel at all like good parenting to me. Personally, it feels like leverage and exploitation.

I struggle with this. No child consents to anything, not to being born, not to being adopted, (in younger years) not to which parent gets custody, and so on. I have reconciled this in a way that seems to be driving the extraordinarily good relationship I have with (all 5 of) my sons. It is my choices that forced them into existence. They owe me nothing because non-existent beings are incapable of consenting to anything. I had all the power of consent and due to this extremely one-sided arrangement, I remain in their debt for the rest of my life. I reside in a permanent state of servitude to them. These are the defaults, our starting points. Respecting their consent builds abiding trust at a deep level. Consent is key to salvation, ethics, ability and love. It hangs out in the very best circles. The weight I place on consent flows from Church's teaching about Satan's premortal plan for us - which was based on a lack of consent and the resulting dearth of worthwhile redemption. Associating those two conditions with evil has changed my relationships with others, in ways that can be indescribably positive. Consent may outweigh even kindness in achieving our most valuable and fulfilling humanity. Plugging my parenting into all that has been ceaselessly good.

I used web apps to turn this into a transcript; I posted it here: https://justpaste.it/gz7x3 ftr: Raw MP3 file (gleaned from F12 Dev Tools), Podcast Transcription, Transcript Cleaner.

I agree. Another is Broken Things to Mend. For me, that talk came when my life was at a deep point in it's unraveling - but I hadn't yet realized there was no righteous thing I could do about it. 2010's priesthood sessions testified how life would improve in some relevant way (not instantly but eventually) if we just fulfilled our covenants. Holland's talks were balm when those improvements never came. There are many Church leaders I believe stood closer to Christ. Holland was the one I believed stood where we stood.

Tell us what you're going to do or what you did, depending on which side of the holiday you're on. Or just craft a barely legible cry for help. Include your phone number if you want a call with a feigned emergency. Today's plan was to drop a rumcake and a flavored pork roast at the in-laws today. sidebar: Huzzah to #5's first ever booze buy. First out of all his siblings, afaik. However the rum cake didn't work out so we punted to a homemade pizza and no roast. Then we couldn't coordinate schedules w/ the inlaws who are endlessly busy so eh. For Christmas day, me + adult sons #3,#4,#5 are here all day. #1 is working until mid afternoon. #2 moved to Philly and is living the sort of awesome life that just happens when you escape FL. #3 is tapping out a broken bolt from the block of the 92 Buick and installing the water pump assembly. Unless he gets it done today. I'm itchy w/o a couple of spare cars around. Maybe I'll dig out the 61 Sunliner tomorrow and guage it's road readiness. I'm gifting myself a larger bedroom tomorrow, given that #2 has moved out. I might work a bit remotely, migrate a camera system over to a box w/ an AI processor and play with that. We're all doing Chinese take-out when #1 gets home. past that. I'm toying with the idea of a daily music post here. It's a month of artists you've never heard of. I'm not sure where it would fall on the obnoxious <-> welcome scale tho. Oh and Speaking of the world's worst advent calendar: We're all finally over a week+ of crud where every day was a different symptom. Happy for that. Happy ever-lengthening days to you, yours, everyone and everyone else. And happy ever warming days to those of us still in FL. This was two hours ago.

As near as I can tell, Polygamy and Plural Marriage are fully interchangeable. Both mean marriage to more than one spouse and include Polygyny, Polyandry, Group Marriage. Judging it's use in Church publications, I suspect the Church wants us to assume Plural Marriage means Polygyny (1 man, multiple women).

Recalling my history with FS, I've seen a lot of hints that an amount of names are shared for temple work, without any interaction on a member's part. One indication was that the ID of the member who shared it would be missing.

Are 100% of names handed out in temples submitted by close family members? If Y, are we certain it's absolutely 100% ?

A couple of things. First, ugh, sorry. I just realized I didn't clarify whether or not we're talking about >110y names. I am only referring to >110y names. Second. Navidad also mentioned his parents who were born in 1910. That's who I was referring to when I said a member could check FS to see if they're work can be done. My posts after that are only referencing >110y submissions into FS. What I've seen are names in FS's Your Impact section (shows the names I submitted who just had their work done) show up shortly after I submit them to FS. I am informed that their work (and their immediate family's work) had been done in disparate temples around the world. Regarding that last, I'll add a couple of things. One is a recentish change in FS policy limited reserving names [ within FS ] to close relatives. Before that I had the an option to reserve anyone from within their profile. This seemed to include profiles I hadn't even worked on. However, I've only reserved one name (ever, anywhere) so I can't be sure of this very last bit. The other thing is I abruptly stopped working in FS last spring so I no longer have a stream of examples in front of me. I'm also unaware of any changes in policy since then.

For this last bit, you mean it wouldn't be eligible for ordinances until a year has passed, correct?

Ah. I agree with that in the context you're working with. And if they're <110y, you're certainly right. But for anyone >110, just placing them in FamilySearch is a de facto submission to have their ordinances performed. Typically in short order.

We have a misunderstanding somewhere. I was volunteering to check FamilySearch to see if ordinances were done.

All of the above aligns with my understanding. Yet, just inputting names into FamilySearch will result in those names being available to temple trirppers for baptisms, etc. Many times I've had newly a entered family get their work done within days - in temples all over the world.

I'd do it. In this use case, it'd more ethical than adhering to the rules.

Any member with an account on FS could look it up. You likely know someone who would.

It's all good. Well, okay. Very little is good today. But as far as doctrine goes, nearly every faith believes they're right-est and most claim some degree of exclusivity. When we step back and understand that, we are better people. And you do this better than most. But I think there is a legit reason to take issue with our ordinances for the dead. It's that we reach into families (often families for which we are the least related) and co-opt them into our faith. We do display some minimal respect via some minimal boundaries, namely the 110y-dead requirement. And there's some non-policed guidance that we don't cherry-pick souls outside our lines (following some past egregious behavior on our part). I think those boundaries worked when this work was invisible. But FamilySeach pulls all of it into the light. If closer family members are outraged or insulted or just skeeved-out that we baptized their evangelical grandparents, I believe those feelings are reasonable and deserve our respect. Where I think we fall down is we pretend these reactions never happen. Or we quickly dismiss those feelings w/ some trite justifications. We do this and I think it smacks of unkindness on our part. We ought to be better here. I am uncertain if any of this reflects your feelings. But I think it is how I would feel.

per https://www.ldsdaily.com/church-lds/chemical-attack-at-latter-day-saint-meetinghouse-dominican-republic

Frak. I will never have words for this. I am grateful every day I don't know this pain. What was life like with him? I've been a caregiver, long and short term but every experience is different.

Very interesting way to put it. I am going to have to ponder on that for a while. rpn makes a salient point. FamilySearch has an unclaimed 2-fold mission. To create the world's authoritative (defacto) family tree and perform temple work on every person in it. To give you an idea of the impact of an army of mostly LDS volunteers, my FS account says: Noting here that I found every one of these names thru my lines. Each one has a line to me that I can see. Some large percent of that number will be duplicates. But I've increased my abilities and conscientiousness over the years. My unique adds are somewhere between half and 90% of that number. My point being, I'm just one rando volunteer. Every American line has been touched for years now. 10y ago: When I got to a new family, I rarely ran into anyone already in FS. 1y ago, I have to dig hard to find missed names for the current family (and I do find them). I'm pretty sure we Church members have a reckoning coming over this. It's because we operate without consent. I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet. Other Church members can't envision why it would. I am the only Church member among my siblings (inc half sisters from earlier/later marriages of my dad). I purposefully omitted my half-sisters' families from my lines, partially to better allow them to heal from our father. I also omitted my siblings' spouse's families because I don't think they'd approve. The other 10k or whatever it is, I never asked for their consent. I just did it.