Connie

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Posts posted by Connie

  1. On 10/25/2023 at 5:02 PM, Vort said:

    Even more irritating to me than playing everything at funeral dirge tempo is that Organists. Can't. Count. I mean, how hard is "ONE-two-three-four-ONE-two-three-four"? Seems simple enough, right? Yet wherever I go, whatever ward I visit, almost every time the organist cuts off the sustained notes a half-beat too early. Every freaking time. Is it really so hard to hold the note out for the entire count? Did the note do something to offend you? Kick your dog, maybe? I mean, counting the beat is pretty much the most basic possible part of music, more even than hitting the correct tone. How can this be so universally badly done? Seriously, I don't get it. 

    Could it be that is when the chorister cuts them off? Or maybe it's because the congregation cuts off early and they feel silly holding it out so much longer when no one is singing anymore.

    I've been playing the organ (badly) for over 20 years, so maybe it's easier for me to have charity towards those pianists who are the vast majority of organists these days and who are actually willing to try (there are many who aren't willing). The organ is very different than the piano. There are a lot more fingering strategies one has to learn because of the lack of a sustain pedal. It makes sense to me when an organist (who is really a pianist) has to play a song slower than it calls for, though unfortunately I do still find it annoying. I try to play the hymns at speed, but there are definitely those that I still struggle with. Plus there are other considerations such as following a chorister, which an organist is supposed to do. A lot of choristers aren't musically trained and are just doing the best they can. They can be difficult to follow.

    Might I suggest walking up to your ward organist and/or chorister some Sunday and thanking them for their willingness to serve. It's a mighty rare occurrence and may just make their day.

  2. Hello, forum friends. I’m popping in because I need your help. I am continuing my education and taking a writing class this term. My big assignment is to write an argumentative essay, and my chosen topic is censorship on social media.

    I wanted to collect some opinions and experiences of regular social media users, so I created a short survey. If you have a minute or two to spare, I would appreciate if you’d take the survey. I am particularly interested in users of Facebook, Twitter (X, if you prefer), and YouTube, but any social media is fine. At this time, I am not counting forums in my definition of social media. If you or anyone you know has experienced censorship on social media, I would be particularly interested in how you would answer these survey questions. Feel free to share the link to this survey with others. Answers remain anonymous.

    Let me know if you have any questions. I would also appreciate any feedback you have on my survey questions or about the topic in general.

    https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd6XHvPqW_0UuZrGj0LoKXDZQSWdN7vPpAAfdBSDt5SbMHDhQ/viewform?usp=sf_link 

  3. It sounds like your daughter has a wonderful childlike faith. It reminds me of Adam when the angel asked him why he offered sacrifice and he said, “I know not, save the Lord commanded me.”

    She is at the age of leaning on the testimony of others, her parents and leaders. That’s okay. Don’t discount that too readily. “More blessed are they who shall believe in your words because that ye shall testify that ye have seen me, and that ye know that I am” (3 Nephi 12:2). She has years in which to come to know for herself.

    Your role (and it already sounds like you are doing a great job at it) is to teach her the doctrine of Christ. Help her to understand what commitment she will be making at baptism. Help her understand how to gain a testimony. It’s a process that she will love because it involves checking off boxes every day. Teach her the steps along the covenant path. Baptism is just the first one. It is a lifelong process of checking off little and big boxes. Help her understand that all those boxes are to get her to the ultimate objective of becoming like her Heavenly Parents and living with them in the Celestial Kingdom. Utilize the children & youth program. Help her learn to set and achieve goals that will help her along the process.

    You’re doing better than you think, Jane. Keep doing what you are doing.

  4. 55 minutes ago, Grunt said:

    Do you have to have that tablet to take the survey?   I'll certainly take it if not.  I'm a dirty Mac user.

    No, not at all. I would just recommend taking a minute or two to look up some info about the product. I appreciate you being willing to take a little bit of time for my survey. I will PM you the link.

  5. Hi, fellow forum members! Long time, no see.

    I am in my third semester of the PathwayConnect program, and am taking a digital marketing class. My current assignment is to create a survey for a specific product and have 10 people take the survey. Then I get to write up what this teaches me about marketing research.

    I have created a survey on Google Forms for the Microsoft Surface Pro 8 laptop/tablet. If anyone is willing to help me out and take this totally fake survey, please PM me so I can send you the link.

    Thank you for your consideration of my request.
    -Connie

  6. On 12/28/2020 at 9:05 AM, Traveler said:

    I have thought on this concerning how Christ dealt with sin.   I could be convinced contrary but I believe that Jesus would only forbear and exonerate only when one repented.  That through love and honor of individual right to exercise agency; releases as an example to us all to end the cycle of revenge - that destroys love and fosters hatred. 

     

    The Traveler

    That is a good point!

  7. 12 hours ago, mordorbund said:

    I see Ansit and Orual speaking out of their ignorance - akin to hearing people talk about the "cruel" Old Testament God and "loving" New Testament God (I don't think these people have read either). I think after the divine interview Orual speaks more like the old priest. The devouring is awful and frightening, but in it you find the god's love. Like Paul's cross theology - it is shameful to have a god who was executed, but such is our salvation! These are people who have come to know the gods.

    Revisiting the gods' jealousy and the book's exploration of love, I found Lewis' argument deficient. I think he intended for us to see the gods working for the best interest of those they love, but the distinction isn't clear enough for me. Acting in the best interest of those they love, molding them into their best selves, these are the claims everyone in the book makes. Ultimately Orual sees that the gods have been making the same claim, but it's only different because they have the omniscience to make it true. That's not a difference in love, that's a difference in perfection (really completeness).

    I may need to revisit my thoughts in the previous paragraph. As I said, if the gods are just trying to make you your best self, the love they manifest is no different from any other in the book. But this idea of self-deception is an interesting one. Their role is to show you who you are - in contrast to who you profess to be. They sit there in the silence with you until you peel off the max in frustration or finally sit comfortably in your own skin. Thanks for that perspective.

    I also think Lewis places Fox in the bliss of the dead, but I disagree with that choice. I think that's Lewis' love of ancient Greek culture giving birth to "reason" more that anything consistent in the work. It may be that people in the 50's did not have quite so many secular "rational' thinkers as I've seen championed in the last few decades that I just don't share the same perspective.

    I’m not sure I would agree that Orual speaks more like the old priest, but maybe. It was the Fox when talking with Orual at the end that says “at least the priest knew that sacrifice is necessary” or something to that effect. It is rather scary sometimes to have your “natural man” devoured/sacrificed in order to become more divine.

    I see the Fox in many ways being the voice of Lewis’s own theological beliefs.  Even early on in the book he’s the one who tells Orual “the Divine Nature has no jealousy.” And he’s the one who talks of everyone having a spark of the divine in them, which I don’t think Orual ever really came to believe, having been taught that the nobility had divine blood but not the common people. I believe it’s in Weight of Glory that Lewis talks about “living in a society of possible gods and goddesses.” I think Lewis sees the Fox as at least partially right, so I think it makes sense that he would place him in the bliss of the dead.

    I completely disagree that everyone in the books makes the claim of acting in the best interest of those they love. That is certainly what Orual paints for us and wants us to believe in the first part, but when her veil is striped off she comes to see how wrong she was. It’s part of her self deception. She never acted in the best interest of Psyche. She wanted Psyche to remain “hers.” After all the incidents with Psyche and the god of the mountain, Orual goes to Psyche’s room and burns the poetry Psyche had written to the god and many of her clothes, just keeping the things from her childhood when “they were all happy together.” She basically wanted Psyche to remain a child, to remain her child. That is what the conversation with Ansit really brought out to me. The Fox comes to see this much sooner than Orual does (perhaps another way the bliss of the dead for him makes sense to me). He tries to use his love for Orual as a bargaining chip against her dueling Trunia’s brother (the same way Orual used it to get Psyche to use the lamp to look at her husband) but later comes to apologize that he did that, saying something like “love should not be used in that way.”

    Thanks for discussing this with me, mordorbund. It’s always nice to get different perspectives and solidify your own.

  8. On 10/21/2014 at 10:01 AM, mordorbund said:

    Orual's love is shown to be deficient because it is really a possessive drive leading to her jealousy. We even discover Redival's jealousy coming from a similar "selfish" love as you term it. Is the love of the gods any different? Aren't they extremely jealous of their creation? Doesn't their love drive them to transform the characters into what they (the gods) want and not necessarily what the creation desires?

    We only got to see a partial judgment scene where Orual gets to present her charge to the gods, only to discover that it was the tantrum of a child. If we saw a full, final judgment (and bringing some Christianity into their theology) who would be saved? and who would be damned? Psyche? Orual? Redival? the king? Fox? Barda? the Soldier (his name escapes me)? Based on what you've learned of the gods in this story, what does it take to enter into the bliss of the dead and what does it take to enter into the misery of the dead?

    That certainly seems to be the belief of the people of Glome, that the gods love is selfish. The old priest, when he is calling for the sacrifice of Psyche/Istra mentions “the loving and the devouring are the same thing” or something like that. Bardia’s wife, Ansit, echoes that thought when she is accusing Orual of working Bardia to death. She says “your love is like the gods.”

    I don’t think that’s the message Lewis wants us to take away, though. He does not seem to ascribe jealousy to Divine Love. As Orual begins to have her visions and dreams, it strips away the veil she uses to hide. She begins to see the ugliness within herself and ultimately takes that ugliness to god wherein it’s transformed to beauty. I think Lewis is saying “the gods” want us to be our best self and our best self is when we are sharing in the beauty and goodness of the Divine Nature.

    So I would say that is what Lewis is saying it takes to enter into the “bliss of the dead”—to have no self deception, to completely see your own ugliness or wrongness, and to take that to god so that he may change you to be more divine. In that sense, I think it’s clear that Psyche and Orual get there and perhaps even the Fox if we take his conversation with Orual at the end of her vision into account. He seems to recognize where he was wrong and feel remorse for it. Redival and the King, probably not. Bardia is not even mentioned after Orual resolves her feelings for him upon his death and her conversation with his wife, so not sure where I would place him.

  9. 9 hours ago, mordorbund said:

    Is this a Lewisian way of suggesting that God's transformative (even deifying) love is manifest in both the ritualistic Hebrew (Old Testament) and Greek (New Testament) church? Or should this be taken to mean that Lewis supposes God to use both superstitions (to use your term) and reason to draw people to Him. A variation on Alma 29:8 perhaps?

    Where does this put the new priest then? Are the gods working through him in the "language" of the culture? Or does he not "get it" and is leading them on the road to apostasy?

    I would say they are two different human interpretations (or maybe emphases) of the divine. One to ritual/symbolism, the other to nature/reason. God can use both to bring about whatever good that a particular people are willing to accept, and there is truth in both, just not complete or full truth. I think that the scene with the woman who brings the sacrifice to the old statue shows this. When Orual asks why she doesn’t use the new statue, her answer is that the new statue is only for the learned and noble and wouldn’t understand common people. Perhaps suggesting that there are different ways of approaching and interpreting the divine, and that an individual may be reached better by one way over another.

  10. On 10/21/2014 at 10:01 AM, mordorbund said:

    Do you think Redival got to see Psyche's palace? Do you think she saw it as in the original myth (as a real thing), and not as a passing vision like Orual saw it?

    There's really no indication in this version of whether Redival did or not. Lewis doesn't address this in any way. Perhaps if it was important to her own journey, which, again, Lewis doesn't get in to with the main focus on Orual. Redival's relationship with Psyche is different than Orual's, and yet there's the similarity of jealousy. Orual wants to be the only person Psyche loves, so perhaps more of a "love jealousy." Whereas, Redival is jealous that Psyche stole Orual's love away from her, perhaps more of a "hate jealousy." These are bad terms; I'm not sure how else to put it. Hopefully you understand. In my reading, I never really got a sense of how Redival feels about religion or the gods, so if she did get to see the palace it's hard to say whether she would have seen the real thing or the passing vision. Orual doesn't want to believe in it or see it, so even when she catches a glimpse, it's quickly gone.

    I will get to your other questions later. I'm particularly interested in that middle one.

  11. I have finished the first 5 chapters. They are really pretty short chapters if anyone wants to jump on and read these first 5 by the end of the week it’s still very doable. I’ve forgotten so many details between readings.

    I am struck this time with just how much Orual is stuck between worlds/cultures. She was born into this very pagan culture with heavy superstition and ritualistic worship of their goddess, Ungit. But the first person she comes to love is this Greek slave her father acquires to teach her. From him she learns about reason and logic and nature or the natural order of things. I’m interested to see how she will combine the two.

    I’m noticing how much Orual has in common with her father. At one point Psyche tells her, “You look just like our father when you say those things.” And how much she does not like that. I think she tries not to notice or think on how much they are alike.

    One other thing I’m noticing is she mentions the “smell of Ungit” quite often, the smell of animal sacrifice. She talks of things that “reek with holiness” and the “horror of divine things.” There’s a definite strong disgust she feels toward religion, I think, and yet she also has a fascination with it.

    When you get a chance to read them, let me know your thoughts on the first 5 chapters.

  12. 2 hours ago, MrShorty said:

    more informal -- read it at our individual leisure and post comments whenever?

    This is what I was thinking. I'm sure we're all busy and holidays are right around the corner. Just make whatever comments you want and ask discussion questions if you wish. Or look back at some of the past questions and see if you want to make any comments on those.

    Would you prefer something more formal? I could come up with something.