When I was around middle-school-age, I had the opportunity to attend a sleep-away church camp during summer, which I loved. It was a beautiful little Lutheran church camp situated in a forested area outside my hometown of Omaha, Nebraska. The camp had horses and cabins, teepees, platform tents, a pool, trails by the Platte River, and lots of hiking, singing, crafts, and outdoor activities — very comparable to a Young Women’s camp. This particular camp also had a team-building ropes course with various obstacles that campers would have to overcome with the help of their fellow campers, and team building became one of my favorite parts of camp. Probably the…

Do any of you ever have a weird ache of spiritual homesickness that reminds you that you are actually from (and hopefully returning to) a better place? Or that your place of true belonging is somewhere much much better than this? I have felt this again lately, and it is characterized by two opposing thoughts. First, I am grateful for the inspiration that out there somewhere are celestial relationships and communities that are infinitely better than this hot mess we are currently wallowing in. Second, I can feel some despair that we seem to be moving so very slowly toward those relationships and communities. Usually I sit with this a…

My favorite parable is the Prodigal Son. (Luke 15:11-32) I love the story of redemption and love. I never tire of reading this popular parable which is overflowing with lessons for me. Naturally, I usually focus on the prodigal son but there are two simple exchanges between the father and the older son that have helped me learn more about the love Christ offers us and the love he expects from us. The prodigal was not only whole-heartedly welcomed home with hugs and kisses, but celebrated with the best robe, a ring, shoes, fatted calf, music, and dancing. Perhaps it was the celebration and not the welcome that bothered the…

Many of us are in the thick of state legislative sessions, and if that’s not largely exhausting and disheartening, I don’t know what is. I’m a big proponent of celebrating every win, no matter how small, and that practice keeps me grounded and moving forward. And there are always wins however small they may be. But if celebrating those small wins is perhaps comparable to stopping and smelling the roses, then some days leave me feeling like I looked up from smelling the roses and realized I was staring down the eye of a major storm like a hurricane or tornado. Then, if I’m not careful, the roses that once…

I’ve always found it rather awkward to have to explain the terminology of “wards” and “stakes” to my friends of different faiths. But it’s worth thinking about the connotations that are at least dimly present in the word “ward.” The usage of the term in the Church is left over from a time when civic and religious government were seamless in “Mormon Country,” and the church “ward” simply corresponded with political and administrative districts. I suspect (hope!) MWEGers are more aware than most of the political wards they live in. The other context in which we most often use the word “ward” is, of course, in referring to divisions within…

Have you read this book? My guess is that if we took a poll of the current US population, we’d find that not a lot of people alive now have. Originally published in 1896, it remains one of the best-selling books of all time, with more than 50 million copies sold, most here in the United States. To put that into perspective, when it was first published, the nation’s population was about 74 million people. In short, this book achieved an incredibly high level of cultural saturation, and if you were walking around America in the first part of the 20th century, you likely knew about it, you were familiar…