PolarVortex

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Everything posted by PolarVortex

  1. Tarte tropézienne... I think this dessert comes from St. Tropez in the south of France, but the Wikipedia article is available only in French, which I don't read very well. But it looks très délicieuse.
  2. I'm in a similar situation. There are some members of my extended family who I really enjoy not being around, and the thought of being neighbors or roommates with them in the next life brings me no comfort, either. How did you form your opinions of your adoptive family? Is it based on their current behavior in this life? (I am guessing you'll answer "yes.") If so, remember that they're just starting out and have a long way to go toward God, just as you and I and everyone else do. Disliking someone eternally because of their character in this life is sort of like disliking a child forever because you hated changing diapers when they were babies. I've always viewed ordinances as things that open up great everlasting possibilities instead of eternally locking you into scary stuff that you might not like. Heaven will be heaven because of reconciliation and forgiveness and new understandings of our fellow beings... even beings we can't stand here on Earth.
  3. "You can cheat others, but you cannot cheat yourself... or God." I think you should support your son's decision to worry about this and to stay oriented toward the Church. Other people might deal with this issue simply by leaving the Church altogether. So your son is starting to do something noble and praiseworthy here. However, I cannot think of any situation where keeping unconfessed sin secret is the winning strategy in the long run, and where refusing to make amends (except when doing so would injure others), including amends to yourself, would bring the most blessings. I hope your son thinks of his bishop and church leaders more as healers than as judges. If I am sick and I go to my doctor, I'm going to tell him every symptom I have. Refusing to be honest with a doctor may have some short-term benefits (e.g., a government worker with a security clearance refuses to disclose feelings of depression out of fear of losing the clearance and a job), but in the long run it could injure you very badly. Same with refusing to be honest with the people who can help heal you from the sickness of sin. Unless your son's past acts are extremely unusual (and I don't have all the data here, so I don't want to speak in absolutes), you could try to persuade him that unconfessed sin may hurt him very badly in the long run, and that this alone is reason for dealing with it now. Best wishes, Polar (By the way, the quote at the top was from a movie about nuns. I altered it slightly to make it more applicable here... the original quote was, "You can cheat your sisters, but you cannot cheat yourself... or God.")
  4. RealClearReligion has a long-running article on the ugliest vestments ever worn. Maybe I'm nuts, but 18 of the 20 struck me as quite nice. As an LDS convert, I may perhaps be going through vestment withdrawal. The 2 of the 20 that struck me as laugh-out-loud awful were... Full fashion show at: http://www.realclearreligion.org/lists/the_ugliest_vestments_ever_worn/
  5. Dessert? French vanilla ice cream (French vanilla uses a special egg custard) Sound? My cat purring Scripture? Matthew 25:40 - "Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me." Movie? - Dr. No Vacation spot? - Oahu
  6. I like Dr. Laura's rule: no dating while you're legally married, especially if kids are in the picture. But you can't control other people. I would approach your wife and tell her that she's setting a bad example for the children by failing to uphold and honor marriage. If she shrugs you off, I would talk to her parents and tell them the same thing in a respectful, constructive way. Ask them to help get the divorce accomplished swiftly, if necessary. If they all blow you off, I would then tell your kids that their mother is doing something you think is wrong, but that you'll try to stay on the best terms possible with her for the kids' sake. Get through the divorce and then start rebuilding your life and let the past go. Limit your relationship to your former wife and her new husband to only things that are connected to the kids' welfare. I agree with FunkyTown's advice about bad-mouthing. My father was a terrible alcoholic and did many awful things to my mother. He pawned her jewelry to get cash for beer. He abandoned her and me and never sent a dime of alimony or child support, and this was back in the days when employers could legally pay women less then men for the same job. For my entire childhood, my mother never said a bad word about my father and simply let his acts speak for themselves. Because of her wisdom and refusal to start warfare against my father and his side of the family, I had a fairly decent relationship with all the relatives on both sides of my family... at least with the ones who didn't commit suicide or die of alcoholism, sadly. The thought of a blended family with stepchildren and stepparents may scare you, but my mom later married a nice man who I grew to love more than I did my biological father. (My stepbrothers not so much, but they were usually in jail so I didn't see them a lot.) Wishing you strength for the journey... and never defocus from the good things in your life, like your kids. May Heavenly Father bless you and your families, too.
  7. Maybe someone can explain something to me that I have never understood. The President said, "Now let’s make two things clear: ISIL is not Islamic. No religion condones the killing of innocents." Leaving aside some troublesome parts of the Old Testament, I suppose that's true. And, in fairness to our Muslim brothers and sisters, a growing number of muftis have declared fatwas against terrorism, suicide bombers, and even al-Qaeda. (A few fatwas have also come out against odd things, such as Jerry Falwell and the "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" television show, but that's for another thread.) What I don't understand is why international Islamic leaders don't unite and issue a united set of strong fatwas against all forms of terrorism and the killing of innocents. From what I understand, the sporadic existing fatwas against terrorism have originated from countries outside the Middle East and don't feel like the force of law yet. As for Obama... I think Michael Moore has got it about right. Young students of the year 2114 will be stumped when they're asked what Obama is famous for other than being the first black president.
  8. Why does this absurd creature have three English words, when some very useful concepts have no English words at all? In chess, there is a situation in which one player must move, but any move the player makes will be disadvantageous, whereas no disadvantage would appear if a move were not required. No word for this exists in English, but I am told that German-speaking persons call this a Zugzwang. I've had many dating relationships that were rich in Zugzwangs.
  9. The New York Times had an article yesterday about the separatist dominoes falling in Europe if Scotland drop-kicks the United Kingdom. Who knows, in a decade or two all the colored regions in this map might be new countries. Some of them might even declare their local dialects to be new national languages.
  10. If I did the math right, the United Kingdom would lose about 8% of its population if Scotland leaves. That may not seem like much, but Texas has about 8% of the U.S. population, and chopping Texas out of the U.S. would hurt. I predict that Scotland will leave the U.K., and that we'll see more of this in the years ahead as more "submerged" ethnic groups in various nations decide they want their own show. Psychologists have taught us for years that humans tend to confuse improvement with change, which probably explains why some people enter and exit various religions.
  11. If I were you, I would be quite shocked that my grandparents had secretly carried around this expectation of a loan from me. I'd remind them in a loving way that I'm not a mind reader and did not know they had this expectation. Then I'd ask how I could support the business in any other way I could. Or was it so secret? If they had spoken openly about starting a business and had set a vague expectation of help from the family, then that thickens the gravy a lot. In that case, I'd sit down with them and express my sorrow over any misunderstandings, and then I'd ask them for their advice on the best way to repair the hard feelings and move forward. If their advice is good, I'd take it. Is there any way they can ramp the business up slowly without a big lump of up-front cash? If so, look at those options. If not, I'd urge them to apply for a loan from a bank just to open their eyes. They might be turned down flat, but the process of applying for a business loan will force them to organize their thoughts and get real about how much risk they are taking. If they get defensive and say there's no way the bank would lend them money, then that's telling you something important. I've been in this situation before. When your banker denies your loan application and says your business model will flush all your capital down the toilet in six months, it tends to get your attention...
  12. No way of knowing how this will turn out, of course, but your children need you to set an example of how to be strong in the face of adversity. It's one of the greatest gifts a parent can ever give a child. I know it's hard, but it will bear tons and tons of fruit when they are adults. I can't help but wonder if your description of your husband mentions only the surface symptoms and omits some deeper problem that he won't admit to you. I've been single my whole life and I'd give anything for a wife and kids, even if they were imperfect. I hope your husband finds the strength to deal with the causes of his unhappiness. And garryw is correct, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. I have a friend who acted much like your husband. A year after his divorce, he looked down upon the new ruins of his life and told me glumly, "The grass [on the other side of the fence] is brown."
  13. I was once engaged, and we broke up because one of us was LDS the other was not. This can be tough, but it doesn't have to be if you put the focus in the right spots. If you tell your husband that he comes first no matter what, and you focus on all the things you and your husband agree on (loving and setting good examples for the kids, being honest in your dealing with others, etc., regardless of where these ideas come from) then these things can overshadow the mixed-faith state of your marriage and life can still be wonderful. But if you make the same mistake I did with my fiancee (picking fights over totally inconsequential points of doctrine, secretly building long-term strategies to convert the other, accentuating our 20% spiritual differences instead of celebrating the 80% we had in common, ridiculing the peculiar parts of each other's religion, etc) then... well, DON'T. You can choose to focus on the good things you and your husband have in common, or on the differences that divide you. Whichever one you pick will slowly expand.
  14. I mentioned this in a previous post on an unrelated topic, but I have found that a good Toastmasters club can really beef up your networking. The key is to find a good club with lots of members. Some clubs are small and lackluster, but many are wall-to-wall energy and fun. After a few weeks or months of regular attendance, you will know everyone else quite well and they will know you, too. Stay positive and say you're "between jobs." If you are positive and friendly, you will attract people, many of whom have very fat Rolodexes that can lead you to your next job. I used to go to a club with 50 members, and I can't count the number of business connections that were made: realtors, therapists, car repair, web site design, writing and editing, photography... the list goes on forever. One of my best friends (a civil engineer) got seriously ill and had to drop out of work for a year, and when he returned to the job market he found his career in tatters and was highly undesirable as an employee because of his need to visit doctors so much during working hours. But from Toastmasters he met some big shot executive at one of the largest airports in the U.S., and he got a job and is now pulling down oodles of money. Think you can't speak in public? Toastmasters is especially wonderful with total beginners who have no experience or skill in public speaking. I really can't recommend them highly enough... if you find a good club that meets often. I just Googled "LDS Toastmasters." There is an LDS Toastmasters club in the Philippines, and one person on LDSPlanet mentioned her Toastmasters activity, and LDSLiving had a 2009 article on public speaking that mentioned Toastmasters. That's it, surprisingly. Best wishes to you. My career came to a dead stop in early 2013 but I crossed paths with the right person, and professionally I'm in the best place of my career now. PV P.S. I agree with the "LinkedIn is creepy" comment. I stopped logging into LinkedIn because all it did was rub my nose in fresh updates about former co-workers I loathed who had become turbocharged Silicon Valley executives making fantastically inflated salaries.
  15. Older readers will perhaps recall a 1970s television show called "The Waltons," which was set in rural Virginia during the Great Depression. One of the few episodes I remember from this series (which I saw decades ago) contains my most recent memory of the concept of "courtship." It involved a preacher who asks John-Boy's teacher for permission to court her. She reacts nervously at first, but she finally agrees and amusingly is seen power-primping in later scenes. Meanwhile, John-Boy's passions for the teacher are also stirring. When he finds out about the teacher's courtship with the preacher, he retaliates by stopping further work on an essay he was planning to submit to a competition. (I didn't say this was an interesting episode, I just said that I remembered it.) Perhaps the sequence is friends > casual dates > formal dates > going steady > courtship > engagement > marriage. We don't seem to ritualize these transitions very much any more, although I was always urged never to date anyone I would rule out for marriage, and to stop dating someone who I had suddenly ruled out for marriage. But courtship seems stronger than just a "I haven't ruled you out as a spouse yet,"which I've heard more than once from a dating partner in answer to my questions about where precisely our relationship stood. But I agree with the idea of a courtship surviving the wedding. One of the most happily married men I know calls his wife every Wednesday at work and asks her out for a date the following Saturday night.
  16. I thought of two verses in the Hebrew Scriptures: "For I, the LORD, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed. From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from My statutes and have not kept them. Return to Me, and I will return to you." (Malachi 3:6) "God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?" (Numbers 23:19) The Malachi verse reminds me of that great line from the movie "Malcolm X," where Malcolm X (or maybe he was still Malcolm Little at the time) was in prison and one of his fellow inmates said, "If you take one step toward Allah, He will take two steps toward you." It's a nice idea, that God's behavior is regular and consistent, and that He acts graciously and disproportionately to our faithful gestures, even a gesture of a single step. I seem to recall one LDS scripture passage about the Church being a house of order and not chaos, and I think it was in the context of the revelation to Joseph Smith that God speaks though only one mouth in the Church (the prophet's). But I can't find it now, so perhaps I am remembering it incorrectly.
  17. I am a convert, and I remember choking over the "only true church" thing during my long period of investigation. I finally decided that the LDS Church was like Polaris (also called the North Star), which lies on the earth's axis of rotation and does not move in the sky as the earth rotates. That doesn't mean that the other stars are wrong or useless for navigation, just that one star happens to be anchored at a celestial pole and is the only true north. And my conviction comes mostly from John 13:35 ("By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another"). More than any other church I've known, the LDS Church lives and breathes the Gospel every day. That's what makes it true for me. The decision to serve a mission is not easy, but I hope you won't be distracted by the thought of a two-year commitment. Two years may seem like a lot, but they're really not. I did not serve a mission, but I did serve in the military for 4 years. The time passed swiftly. I felt fully alive and deeply engaged in the world during those years, and leaving the military felt like a graduation and not a release from prison. My guess is that many returned missionaries feel the same way, although the other comments on this thread make it clear that some missions are rich in challenges. But you're right, there are many opportunities to serve. My own conversion was powered more by the Christ-like behavior of a lot of middle-aged people in my ward than by anything the missionaries specifically did (but they were lovely people, too.) If you do convert, please don't make the same blunder I did. I entered the Church all starry-eyed with expectations of endless perfection and splendor. After a few skirmishes with reality, I found myself drifting away and am returning to the Church now only now after some years in the wilderness (see my other post for the details of my sins).
  18. I have been totally inactive for a number of years, but I'm planning on returning to the Church and giving it another try. I would be a total stranger to the bishop and members in my currently assigned ward. Is it considered good etiquette for me to meet with the bishop before my return and ask about my worthiness to resume taking the sacrament? Or do I just show up and resume full activity as if I had never been away? There is no major unconfessed sin in my life other than two areas that I'm working on: coffee and gambling. I live in the Las Vegas area and I've done sporadic recreational gambling with friends over the years (video poker and blackjack a few times a year), but I've stopped. The coffee is actually the harder of the two, but I'm making progress. Thanks for all comments.
  19. My comment is too late for your farewell talk, but I'm glad your talk went well. I've been involved in Toastmasters for many years, and I follow a technique that I call "glance and drizzle" that works really well for me. I write out the entire speech word for word, and then rehearse reading it and make whatever changes are needed to make it sound natural. I've always said that the best speeches are monologues that feel like dialogues, because the speaker makes eye contact and uses body language to make the audience feel like participants even though only one person is speaking. Anyway, after I get the speech written out, I change the font to something large and break the text up into lines, double-spaced on the page so there is plenty of white space. Often one sentence of the speech is one line, but a long sentence may be broken up into three or four lines. Then I pick one word in each line that summarizes the line or would be a good cue for the entire line. For example, suppose the speech contains this sentence: "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." I break it up on the page and bold one word in each line: Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Then I rehearse the speech until I get to the point where just seeing the bolded word reminds me of the entire line. When I give my speech or talk, I "glance" at the next bolded word, which usually reminds me of the entire line, and I "drizzle" (speak aloud slowly) the entire line to the audience while making good eye contact and sweeping my gaze across the room. If I ever forget a line, it's all right there in front of me, so I can't get lost. The audience sees you looking at them 80% of the time, with occasional glances to your notes that seem as smooth and professional as a newscaster. With the big font and all the blank lines you might have 10 or 20 pages to paw through while you're speaking, but if you're at a lectern you can slide each page off to one side after you use it and nobody will see it. I've tried using note cards and they always backfire on me because I leave out critical things that slip my mind. I'm not so good at memorizing whole speeches, either. The key is to find a technique that works for you. And by the way, Toastmasters is a great organization for practicing your public speaking, especially if you can find a high-energy club.
  20. I was in Salt Lake in August and drove up to Ogden to see the the temple during the open house. It was splendid in every way, and there was even an ice cream place diagonally opposite from the temple parking lot. However, I was a bit surprised by the number of apparently non-LDS visitors and their attire: women in low-cut tops with skirts way above the knee, and sweaty men with shorts and sandals and grimy T-shirts. They were all welcomed with open arms, which was a relief to me because I had packed only blue jeans for my trip and felt inappropriately dressed. Anyway, the new temple was a far cry from what critics have derisively called "McTemples" of several decades ago.
  21. If the happiness of the majority is the supreme organizing principle of human societies, then we'd still have slavery. Dawkins is a brilliant man who writes quite nicely, but he sometimes doesn't think through the consequences of his beliefs.