I came upon a great story from Brigham Young today, about an experience he had once in doubting the prophet Joseph Smith.  I think it is powerful in the principles it teaches about following the prophet:  Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t know a lot about Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the best-selling book Eat, Pray, Love, but I just came across this TED talk she gave recently, and thought that her perspective on the creative process, inspiration, revelation, and artistic work was quite good, and which has a parallel understanding in Mormon culture and theology.  Gilbert argues that the genius that drives creative individuals does not come entirely from within the person, but from some unknown outside influence, and which has been referenced by many different names and labels through the ages.  Latter-day Saints will recognize it as the Spirit or Holy Ghost.

A couple months ago I was approached by Brandon, author of the blog Latter-day Sustainability, with a proposal to team-up on administering an informal survey about the environment to Latter-day Saints and those familiar with Latter-day Saint teachings.  The goal and objective is to learn more about Latter-day Saint members’ views on the environment, including how the LDS Church informs those views.  I thought it was an interesting project, and so I agreed.  Peter, a member of the LDS Earth Stewardship group, also joined our team.

Over the last couple months we have been engaged in compiling, editing, and reviewing a survey to be taken by anyone who is familiar with the LDS Church or its teachings.  We split up the task of producing questions, and of editing them.  We also each sent out a test survey to several people to get their feedback.  We believe we’ve come up with a good survey which will help us gather good data on LDS views about the environment.  There was no cost to us in administering this survey.
The survey will be open until November 15th.  Comments are intentionally closed to help prevent discussion before taking the survey.  Please feel free to share the link of the survey with your family and friends, or anyone who is familiar with LDS teachings.  After the survey closes we will analyze the results and post those we find most interesting for discussion.  Results will also be available to anyone with a reasonable request.  More information is available on the introduction page of the survey.  To contact the administrators with questions or comments about the survey, please email ldssurvey at gmail dot com.

To take the survey, please click the following link:

http://tinyurl.com/environmentsurvey

Come check out the mashup I’ve made of Conference at TempleStudy.com.  I’ve put together a video/sound stream of conference, a liveblog of comments and discussion, and a Twitter feed of all those members around the world Twittering about Conference all together on the same page.  Come by and participate!

P.S. To comment about Conference on Twitter, include #ldsconf in your tweet