Tomorrow’s Young Women lesson in my ward is on the roles of wife and mother. As I am neither, how do I not sound like a total hypocrit when teaching this lesson to my Mia Maids? This lesson has been tormenting me all week. I don’t disagree that these are divine roles. That isn’t the issue. But all I hear in my mind as I prepare what to tell them is, “This is the most important thing you can do. Plan and hope for these goals. Of course, I’m not doing it, but that’s neither here nor there.” I believe I should be a good role model for the girls, and in all other instances I feel like I am. I like what I can bring to the lessons — the other lessons. However, this topic is outside my experience, so all I bring to the lesson is theory, and I don’t think that’s good enough.

I find myself hoping that the girls will be hyper and inattentive and we will end up on some tangent about Israel and patriarchal blessings (which we’ve actually already had as a huge but interesting tangent, but something else like that).

(If interested, this is the lesson, and I’m supplementing the lesson with this talk.)

Mormon music gets a bad rap far too often. People criticize it as cheesy, over and under produced, and too derivative. Far too often these criticism become self-fulfilling prophecies, as I know several people who refuse to listen to any sort of LDS music – making it a vicious circle: The music is apparently lame so they won’t listen to it, and thus they never actually hear it. (This isn’t to say there isn’t lame LDS music – but Sturgeon’s Law applies among Mormons as much as it does to other musical markets).

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The connection is hardly a secret. Many websites cover this (some of them are rather hostile towards the church, but others are friendly or neutral – the best one is here.)

But for those who came in late, I’ll cover the basics and then move into deeper territory afterwards.

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Don’t mind me – I’m just taking advantage of the relatively large audience here to pimp a blog: Institutional Foil. It’s written by friend that I’ve met in person once, but have known online for many years. (I hope he doesn’t mind the advertising, as I didn’t ask.) I’m advertising it right now because his most recent post deserves to be more widely read.

So go forth and read, at least that one post.