sharing

Answering Questions about Mormonism

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A few months ago we showed a TV news story of an interview with a missionary who, how should we say, didn’t quite know how to answer questions about the Church or the temple, and which just left more suspicion and misunderstanding than it dispelled.  We concluded that we must have a good grasp of our own religion in order to answer questions intelligently and articulately, and to teach others about our beliefs.

Yesterday I received an email with a link to a videoclip of a Harvard student, Rachel Esplin, who answered questions about the Church and Mormonism in a very clear and forthright manner.  It looks like the event was an “Engaging Religious Differences” panel discussion, in which many different religious views were shared. Greg has more details at Believe All Things, who referenced aquinas at Summa Theologica on the same topic.

Take a look below.


Day of Faith: Personal Quests for a Purpose – 3. Rachel Esplin from Harvard Hillel on Vimeo.

TempleStudy.com One Year Anniversary

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A Wordle created from all the text of TempleStudy.com posts in 2008. Click on the image to see a larger version. Created at http://www.wordle.net/

A Wordle created from all the text of TempleStudy.com posts in 2008. Click on the image to see a larger version. Made at http://www.wordle.net/

One year ago today I published my first post on TempleStudy.com, my first blog.  And it has been quite a year.  During 2008 I expanded my learning on the temple in leaps and bounds, and was able to share some of that with you as well as learn from you.  I met countless new people and made many new friends.  We shared new thoughts, interpretations, and discoveries with each other.  I attended for the first time several conferences and liveblogged them.  I’ve been humbled by your kindness and charity.  I was blessed to touch the lives of numerous people as you sent me emails expressing your thoughts and feelings.  You have touched me too, in multitudinous ways.  And the growth has been tremendous—nearly 100,000 people have visited the website from 170 countries around the world generating over 220,000 hits.  Over 500 people have subscribed by RSS feed, and another 254 have subscribed by email.  It’s been an amazing experience.  I hope your participation with me and our commenters has been fruitful for you, and has given you more insight into temple studies and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

To commemorate this anniversary of TempleStudy.com my dear wife was very kind and made a Wordle of all the posts from this past year.  For those of you who are not familiar with Wordles, it is an online tool that you can use to input text and generate a word collage with the most commonly used words shown larger, kind of like a tag cloud.  So you can see in this image where our focus was this past year.  Fun to see.  My wife printed out a copy and framed it for me to hang on our office wall.  She’s the best!

For those who are wondering where I’ve been the last month or so, I haven’t left.  The blogging has slowed down a bit.  I think I can blame some of that on our beautiful new baby boy that was born at the end of September.  He’s been a joy to our family, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.  But it did shift my priorities a bit though, and gave me time to rethink things.  I will continue to blog about the temple, but it may not be as frequent.  I want to expand my learning into other areas, in addition to temples.  Not that TempleStudy.com will go too dormant, but I like the sentiments addressed by Sharon Otterman in her New York Times article on slow blogging.  Blogging is becoming a form of expression, and a channel of inquiry and thought, not a 140 character Twitter feed.

So while TempleStudy.com might not fill your daily appetite for news on the temple, hopefully the posts that are published here will be full of meaning.  I look forward to sharing new insights on the temple, and learning more from you throughout 2009.  Please feel free to send me your thoughts and findings.  I’d love to hear from you.

Thanks for a wonderful year!

Sharing Temples & Apologetics from the Bloggernacle

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What the Shared Items look likeOne feature of TempleStudy.com that you may or may not have noticed is the “Shared Items” feature in the right sidebar. It looks something like the image on the right, if you scroll down beyond the “Top Posts,” “Favorite Posts,” “Recent Comments,” and “Recent Posts.” These shared items are links to those posts from the Bloggernacle that I think are interesting, usually about temples, apologetics, or other fascinating subjects that I think you might enjoy.

I use Google Reader (it’s the best, of course!) to browse the Bloggernacle, and whenever I come across a story I like I click the “Share” feature and it automatically adds a link to the story in this section of my sidebar. It’s a quick way to let you peek over my shoulder to see some of the more interesting articles I’ve been reading recently. I currently browse 72 blog feeds from the Bloggernacle. It’s a lot to take in, but I think I’ve got a good system now to sift the wheat from the chaff.

In fact, there is a whole web page devoted to the items I’ve shared with you. You can see it here. This page even has its own RSS feed, if you want to track my shared items in your own reader. In other words, you can track my tracking. Geeky, I know… Occasionally I may comment on an article I see, in which case at the beginning of the shared article you will see my name followed by my comment backed in blue, like this:

Google Reader also gives me the opportunity to share anything else with you from the web as I so choose. So if I come across a web page or something that I find interesting, and if it is not pertinent enough to deserve a full post, I might also add it to the shared items list and perhaps a few comments to go along with it.

Let me know if you like or use this feature of TempleStudy.com in the comments.