A Mormon Perspective on saying NO to more children

Last Sunday I spent 3 hours finishing off Mormonism in an LDS Church with a sweet friend I met online, Janie. She has her own blog here. She kindly met me here in North Richland Hills so we could go to the ward near my home. As I have been reading her blog, I asked her to share her unique perspective and the LDS perspective on contraception and sterilization. Here are her thoughts:

A Mormon Perspective on Pregnancy, Family Planning, and Sterilization

After During my pregnancy with my fourth child, I was SURE we were done. I told everyone my husband was getting the big snip and I reminded him frequently. I got a card for an urologist from my OB and I carried that card in my wallet. I was considering permanent measures so that I would never EVER have to experience morning sickness again. Add to that: we already had four children (a bigger family than many), my husband had recently been laid off his job, and our house was already bursting at the seams. Four was enough, we were done.

weeping in a chapel... just another one of [those] days.

Today I walk into a Catholic church, straight to the prayer chapel, kneel by the altar, light a candle... and I don’t pray. I weep.

For some reason, on this day, I need to go there. Drawn like a magnet to the tiny chapel.

On this day, I realize, once again, how little control I have over my world. And again, the fear and uncertainty rear their heads and glare at me with eyes glowing like red embers.

what REALLY matters?

Edited to update: I am collecting donations for the folks in Joplin MO, so if you would like to make a donation, I'll make sure it gets in the right hands. You can paypal it to jonikmartin@yahoo.com

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End of the world at 6pm (local) Saturday? Epic fail.
The end of the world as they knew it for those in Joplin Missouri yesterday when a tornado tore a path of destruction 4 miles wide through the town? Well, that's closer.

They say you have two families in this life: The one you're born with and the one you choose. The one I chose had a chunk of damage from the storm yesterday that left 79 people dead. My company owns 5 restaurants in Joplin Missouri. Two of my friends live there, a co-worker and his wife, who I have become very close to. They are safe. Our stores are safe and their crews. But things like this make you think about what matters.

[Repost] Submission is NOT a dirty word.

I will be posting a story of a Jehovah's witness in the next couple days, but this weather, and me being under it, has taken a toll on my energy level, so I'm reposting an article from October on submission. :) Enjoy, and sorry for the repeat!


Most names of religions are derived from the name of the founder of that religion, or something related: Christianity is obviously derived from Christ. Judaism from the tribe of Judah and the region of Judea. Buddhism from the teacher, Buddha. Hinduism from the region in which it was founded, Hind. Confucianism was named after Confucius, Zoroastrianism after Zoroaster, and the list goes on.

Islam is one of the only world religions not named for someone or somewhere. The word Islam, in fact, is an Arabic word that means simply “submission” [to God]. It comes from the root Salema, which means “peace, submission and obedience."

The main foundational action in Islam is submission to God: being in a state of purposeful surrender to God’s laws and directives. And one of the things Islam emphasizes is the choice; embracing Islam means to embrace submission. It means to make a choice to submit to God.

Day 3 of Mormon 21 Questions!

Oh, look at this! Blogger restored Day 3 five days later!! LOL! Its sort of a repeat of the *other* day 3, but I'm posting it anyway :)


These are the continued questions from the article FOX News ran in December 2007. The portions in blue were part of the original .



Q: Does the Mormon Church believe Jesus appeared in North America after his crucifixion and resurrection? If so, when did this happen? And under what circumstances?

A: The appearance of Jesus in the Western Hemisphere shortly after his resurrection is described in the Book of Mormon. Mormons believe that when Christ told his disciples in the Bible He had other 'sheep' who should receive his message he was referring to those people in the Western Hemisphere.

Joni’s addition:

Man! They leave out so much here! It was a very important part where Jesus ditched the Jews after his crucifixion and went to North America to reveal himself to the Native Americans (who were actually descendents of a lost tribe or Israel that came over to America in a boat in 600 BC). I am disappointed that the Church didn’t give the full story to Fox.

Jehovah's Witness

Disclaimer: Since Jehovah's Witness falls under mainstream Christianity, I am not going to spend very much time at this point, but I reserve the right to return to the Witnesses at a later date.

Witnesses are much like Christians in many aspects of their beliefs. They believe, as Christians, that the Bible is the authoritative word of God. They worship only one God, and they believe that Jesus Christ came to die to atone for our sins. They believe the Bible is the inspired word of God and logically approach its teachings, investigating in depth each portion of the Bible. I admire the willingness to read, study and learn that the Witnesses encourage. They do have their own translation of the Bible, the New World Translation, but it is not much different from the regular Bible so far as I can tell. They believe the Bible has the answers to problems, direction for life, etc, much like mainstream Christians.

Day 3 - 21 Questions for the LDS church

Well, I had written out this post last week and Blogger chose this ONE TIME when I wrote a post in advance to go ahead and dump all my posts for the past three days. They restored 2 out of 3 parts, so I figured I would just re-write the third part.

Q: Does the Mormon Church believe Jesus appeared in North America after his crucifixion and resurrection? If so, when did this happen? And under what circumstances?
A: The appearance of Jesus in the Western Hemisphere shortly after his resurrection is described in the Book of Mormon. Mormons believe that when Christ told his disciples in the Bible He had other 'sheep' who should receive his message he was referring to those people in the Western Hemisphere.

Joni's Addition:
This is important! I can't believe they didn't go into more detail. Not only did he "appear" in North America, but he stayed around and hung out for a while, giving people instructions.

21 Questions for Mormons - Day 2

These are the continued questions from the article FOX News ran in December 2007. The portions in blue were part of the original article.

The next three questions, the Church answered exactly the same way. They are a Church of few words. Or maybe the answer is just the same in all three cases.

Q: Does the Mormon Church believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God? Does the Church believe in the divinity of Jesus? Does the Church believe that God is a physical being?
A: Mormons believe Jesus Christ is literally the Son of God, the Savior and Redeemer, who died for the sins of humankind and rose from the dead on the third day with an immortal body. God, the Father, also has an immortal body.

Q: Does the church believe God is a physical being? If so, does the Church believe that God lives on a planet named Kolob? Where is the planet Kolob? What significance does the planet have to Mormons?
A: 'Kolob' is a term found in ancient records translated by Joseph Smith. Joseph Smith did not provide a full description or explanation of Kolob nor did he assign the idea particular significance in relation to the Church’s core doctrines.

Joni’s Addition:
This is actually the first time I have heard of the planet Kolob, and Fox News got it wrong. Kolob is not a planet, it’s a star. Some people apparently believe that it is actually a planet, but the widespread opinion is that it is most likely a star. Joseph Smith “discovered” it in the Book of Abraham when he translated it and it is mentioned in chapters 3 and 5. As far as I know, it hasn’t been discovered in real life yet, but you know, Pluto was a planet and is now a star, so maybe that is where Kolob is.

Book of Abraham
3: 3 And the Lord said unto me: These are the governing ones; and the name of the great one is Kolob, because it is near unto me, for I am the Lord thy God: I have set this one to govern all those which belong to the same order as that upon which thou standest.
3: 16 If two things exist, and there be one above the other, there shall be greater things above them; therefore Kolob is the greatest of all the Kokaubeam that thou hast seen, because it is nearest unto me.
5: 13 But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the time that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. Now I, Abraham, saw that it was after the Lord’s time, which was after the time of Kolob; for as yet the Gods had not appointed unto Adam his reckoning.

Incidentally, Facsimile Number 2 is a drawing in hieroglyphics made by Joseph Smith of what he saw in his vision of the tablets.

The LDS website has a complete translation here: http://lds.org/scriptures/pgp/abr/fac-2?lang=eng Apparently Joseph Smith didn’t get the entire translation of the drawing because he notes that several of the figures will be explained later. Olibish is another star/planet mentioned in the above hieroglyphic. It is mentioned only once in the Book of Abraham, and hasn’t been seen or heard from since.

Facsimile Number 2

Fig. 2. Stands next to Kolob, called by the Egyptians Oliblish, which is the next grand governing creation near to the celestial or the place where God resides; holding the key of power also, pertaining to other planets; as revealed from God to Abraham, as he offered sacrifice upon an altar, which he had built unto the Lord.

Q: Does the Mormon Church believe that God and Mary had physical sex to conceive Jesus?
A: The Church does not claim to know how Jesus was conceived but believes the Bible and Book of Mormon references to Jesus being born of the Virgin Mary.

The Mormons are a very logical, rational people. Magical conception seems a little far-fetched, as does the idea that Jesus, being the son of God, never married. So the LDS response to Fox isn’t entirely accurate… they do actually for the most part believe that God and Mary had sex, but the Mary was still technically a virgin because she only had sex with an immortal (God). Additionally, it appears that God did not have sex with Mary on earth, but instead, she was taken over to God’s planet and/or heaven to conceive.

18And he said unto me: Behold, the virgin whom thou seest is the mother of the Son of God, after the manner of the flesh.19And it came to pass that I beheld that she was carried away in the Spirit; and after she had been carried away in the Spirit for the space of a time the angel spake unto me, saying: Look!20And I looked and beheld the virgin again, bearing a child in her arms. (I Nephi 11:18-20)

SOURCES FOR DAYS 1, 2, and 3 Mormon 21 Questions

Works Cited

FoxNews.com. (2007, December). 21 Questions Answered About the Mormon Faith. Retrieved May 2011, from FOXnews.com: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,317272,00.html

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. (n.d.). Study Helps. Retrieved from http://lds.org/: http://lds.org/

oh maaaaannnnn!!

I wrote 3 blogs yesterday addressing the 21 questions Fox News asked the Mormon church.
Now all three (1 I posted, 2 I didn't yet) are gone. I'm not thrilled with this development!! So... stay tuned as I hope Blogger returns those to me at some point in the near future...

Edited to add: aha! I have found out they will be back (fingers crossed).

Blogger is back

What a frustrating day. We’re very sorry that you’ve been unable to publish to Blogger for the past 20.5 hours. We’re nearly back to normal — you can publish again, and in the coming hours posts and comments that were temporarily removed should be restored.  Thank you for your patience while we fix this situation.  We use Blogger for our own blogs, so we’ve also felt your pain.

Here’s what happened: during scheduled maintenance work Wednesday night, we experienced some data corruption that impacted Blogger’s behavior. Since then, bloggers and readers may have experienced a variety of anomalies including intermittent outages, disappearing posts, and arriving at unintended blogs or error pages. A small subset of Blogger users (we estimate 0.16%) may have encountered additional problems specific to their accounts. Yesterday we returned Blogger to a pre-maintenance state and placed the service in read-only mode while we worked on restoring all content: that’s why you haven’t been able to publish.  We rolled back to a version of Blogger as of Wednesday May 11th, so your posts since then were temporarily removed. Those are the posts that we’re in the progress of restoring.

Again, we are very sorry for the impact to our authors and readers.  We try hard to ensure Blogger is always available for you to share your thoughts and opinions with the world, and we’ll do our best to prevent this from happening again.

Posted by Eddie Kessler, Tech Lead/Manager, Blogger

Is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints a cult? 21 Questions!

In 2007, FOXNews ran a story called “21 Questions Answered About the Mormon Faith.”
The following is excerpts from that article:

FOXNews.com compiled a list of 21 questions representing some widely held beliefs and misconceptions about Mormonism and posed them to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The Church objected to answering some of the questions on the grounds that they misrepresent the basic tenets of the Mormon religion.

"Many of these questions are typically found on anti-Mormon blogs or Web sites which aim to misrepresent or distort Mormon doctrines," the Church said in a statement. "Several of these questions do not represent ... any serious attempt to depict the core values and beliefs of its members."

panel experiences

Last week, I headed to UNT for a panel on Women and Spirituality. When I received the notice in my inbox, I nearly peed my pants with excitement... because, what's better than my two favorite topics - women and GOD together in the same discussion!?

Join us for an exploration of gender and spirituality!


The event centerpiece is a panel of women from various faith traditions discussing their personal experiences with the intersection of faith and gender, various traditions' histories of restriction and empowerment, and gender-focused social justice work in religious contexts.


Participants include:

why i [love] organized sports as much as i [hate] organized religion

Politics and religion are among my favorite topics for dinner conversation. I know they are taboo, but I get so energetic and happy hearing other people's views on the topics. Never mind that you're a republican (I just threw up a little in my mouth) or a democrat (ok, this time it made it onto my desk), or that your views on women's rights are woefully 18th century, or that you think we should start handing out hundred dollar bills to homeless people leaving the liquor store...

Never mind that ((your)) God is the one true God and your religion likewise. That you believe [I] am going to hell in a handbasket or that you believe [you] are the only one with a patent on right. You are on a team and your team is exceptional... more, your team is undefeatable and comprised of immortals. Which brings me to my point.

I love organized sports for many of the same reasons people love religion:

the LDS perspective on prayer [and revelation]

prayer
Prayer is an important aspect of living life as a Latter Day Saint. If you read my post "How to be a Muslim, Mormon or Christian for 30 Days" you have seen that prayer is important in any religion that I've studied, and no less emphasized in Mormonism.

Personal prayer: morning and night
Couple prayer (if married): morning and night
Family prayer (if applicable): morning and night
Meal prayers: at each meal

The Mormons believe that God wants to communicate with us: he loves us, he knows our needs, and he wants us to communicate with him through prayer. Although there are not prescribed prayers in Mormonism, instructions are given to them about how to pray:

interfaith combustion

Light Explosion by MindStep

I recieved a comment today on this post about Islamic stages of life that made my day and reminded me what this project is about. Janie writes:

"...as I try to catch up on your postings, I am overhelmed at the vast similarities in different faiths. I feel like I could take my faith (LDS) and our beliefs of the Plan of Salvation and check off all of the similarities to these beliefs. We too believe we lived before this life - this life is a short journey - we will all be in the spirit world waiting until judgment day - and denying God after you have truly KNOWN him is a very heinous sin - but many people who consider themselves 'religious' have not developed a knowledge of God. this is so fascinating I talked my husband's ears off about your blog late into the night - and I said my night nightly prayer in the submission pose like a Muslim does, just to see if I felt the spirt stronger. I did think it helped me to listen in my heart better after my prayer was done. "

When I started this project, it was NOT because I wanted to write yet another theological or academic book on women, feminism, or religion. The only "Academic" part of my project is the research I've done into the religions as I write, but only so that I understand where they are coming from, not so that I can delve into theology about fundamental belief systems. This project is, and always has been, about how women relate to God in the context of their faith.

A tiger named Mystery

My daughter, who is 8, is passionate about all things animal-related. She wrote this story and emailed it to me yesterday. The pictures were included in her story. I love it, so I am posting it here... because isn't our relationship with God kind of like a tiger named Mystery?

Dr. Seuss & [Non-Mormon] Guest Post on a [Mormon] Blog

Remember that invitation I got last week to write a piece for Empowering LDS Women?
Well, turns out, even though I'm not Mormon, they wanted my thoughts on motherhood and balance and God. So I wrote it. And they published it on their site.

Here it is! http://empoweringldswomen.blogspot.com/2011/05/finding-balance-in-motherhood-jonis.html

I don't know if its raining where you are, but today I am grateful for all of the things I have to balance... and my life, precariously balanced as it may be, seems simply perfect today.

(c) Dr. Seuss, Cat in the Hat