For Mormons the New Year means new goals. Mormon New Year's goals--like most New Year's goals--will only be a fading memory by mid-March. Mormons, for example, will set the goal "to read the Book of Mormon again." Goals like this and the lack of follow through goes a long way in explaining why Mormons have read 1 Nephi (the first section of the Book of Mormon) many more times than they have Moroni (the last section of the Book of Mormon).
I have no doubt that Mormons will set ample goals to enrich their religious lives. So, hey Mormons, give 1 Nephi a spin again. I also have no doubt that Mormons will set many of the typical New Year's goals--like "to lose ten pounds." (Given the number of people--including Mormons--who set goals like this on year after year, if it actually came to fruition, many people would live in a state of weightlessness. )
What I do worry about though is that Mormons will give short shift to the part they play in Mormon culture. As such, here are some goals Mormons might want to consider putting into the hopper. While I realize that many of these suggestions will fall on deaf ears, I also recognize that many Mormons know at least a little sign language: so, hope is not lost. Here we go:
I have no doubt that Mormons will set ample goals to enrich their religious lives. So, hey Mormons, give 1 Nephi a spin again. I also have no doubt that Mormons will set many of the typical New Year's goals--like "to lose ten pounds." (Given the number of people--including Mormons--who set goals like this on year after year, if it actually came to fruition, many people would live in a state of weightlessness. )
What I do worry about though is that Mormons will give short shift to the part they play in Mormon culture. As such, here are some goals Mormons might want to consider putting into the hopper. While I realize that many of these suggestions will fall on deaf ears, I also recognize that many Mormons know at least a little sign language: so, hope is not lost. Here we go:
- Finish reading Work and the Glory series, reread the Twilight series, and make non-religious pop culture experiences more meaningful by finding excessive and strained symbolism.
- Add to the Mormon verbs of "scrapbooking," "canning," "judging," and "fellowshipping," a few new ones like "cream of mushroom souping," "object lessoning," and "Family Home Eveninging."
- Offset Mormon standard time by programming the PDA to register one time zone east of where you actually live.
- Find EFY friends, BYU roomies, mission comps, pioneer trek family members, and Friends in the News on Facebook.
- Encourage family members to eat more vegetables by making ranch dressing more readily available.
- Control your tongue by stop saying fetch, frickin', heck and darn so much during church basketball games and by saying moisture, befall, and daily lives more often.
- Join up with a multilevel marketing that involves food storage, bejeweled diapers, tole painting or genealogical research.
13 comments:
Perhaps you mean one time zone east of where you live? I think doing it the other way would only exacerbate the problem of MST.
"...And for our YM/YW extravaganza this year, we're going to go cream of mushroom souping. BYOM (bring your own mayo) to spice things up."
Good call Bryan. I owe you one. I ought to have you over in the new year for casserole. BYOM.
Ah, Brigham, that one was good for a long laugh. Thanks. I'll race you to lose ten pounds.
This blog is great. I just posted my own Resolutions. Anyways. I'm glad that I ran across this blog, and I look forward to your musings in the future.
Oh dear! We are very predictable, aren't we?
tDMg
LdsNana
New verb "Family Home Eveninging"??? lol How about "Green Jello salad with shredded carroting"?
SHUT UP-- bejeweled diapers? Come on. Is that real?
So much of Mormon culture annoys me. Sigh. Maybe that's why I started Mormon Soap Opera on Twitter yesterday. http://www.twitter.com/mormonsoapopera
Grandpa Shayne, "Green Jello salad with shredded carroting" made me laugh. I have found that "funeral potatoing" is well worth my while.
And Maren, as for your race to lose ten pounds, game on.
Lastly Natasha, you wondered whether bejeweled diapers were real. I am not sure. If you were to ask me whether I would consider using them, however, I think I would I would have to answer, "It Depends."
Thanks for a very good and very needed laugh!
If the post didn't crack me up completely, the comments did!
The worst (best?) part was The Work and The Glory. I read the whole series before I joined the Church - it was crucial in the building of my testimony. (Wait, is that a bad thing?) Anywho, during a divorce I got rid of about 90% of my books, including that....so now I'm trying to find them in a library (on a military base in Japan.... wish me luck) so I can RE-read them all. It really was one of my goals for '09..... get out of my brain. *chuckle*
I loved the time zone ....I might try that.
When my oldest got home from his mission I had to tell him he was a real potty nouth!
We still laugh at that!
Object lesson story number 2. I am a RSM who served in the California San Fernando Mission. Roughly 9 months after I started my 18-month stint, they came to us and announced that Elder Maxwell and President Packer wanted us to put away the memorized discussions and start winging it. In Spanish. Every other week or so, we'd get revisions of new handouts, schedules, forms or such with HBE and the date at the bottom, meaning that Henry B. Eyring of the Apostles was responsible for this change of mind. We could never tell how long we'd be using a certain new format.
Well, in March of the following year, four months into the "new program" that got turned into "Preach My Gospel" by the time my sister got her mission call a year later, my mission president asked us to come up with a separate object lesson for each of the principles of the discussion. Some of these, like faith, were easy. You could just rip off one of the Alma 32 analogies and call it good. On the other hand, how do you teach things like the Word of Wisdom without getting graphic?
Well, I was assigned to a companion named Charity Allen at this time and one night, we were working on those darn object lessons. I had gotten up to get a drink from the fridge and Hermana Allen asked if I could get her a Swiss Cake Roll (Little Debbie). I reached up to the box on top of our refrigerator and tossed it to her. As I was heading back, she offered me a Swiss Cake Roll as well. I accepted, but before I could get another one out of the box, she opened hers, licked it copiously and smushed it against her teeth. Then she said "What about now? Do you want it?" "Ew, no!" "See, imagine that the Swiss Cake Roll is your virtue. If you smush it and spread it around, who's going to want it? So you should live the law of chastity!" I have never eaten a Swiss Cake Roll again.
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