Blog, Books, Papers & Lectures
Year: 2011
This evening I attended a gathering at the Little America Grand Hotel paying tribute to the first 100 women admitted to practice law in Utah. It wasn’t until the 1970’s that the total women admitted to practice law in Utah reached the 100 mark.
Utah Supreme Court Chief Justice Christine Durham was one of two keynote speakers, Elder Dallin Oaks was the other. Chief Justice Durham was the 72nd woman admitted to practice in Utah’s history. Now she is the state’s Chief Justice. She and Elder Oaks served together temporarily on the Utah Supreme Court. She was added to the court in 1982, Elder Oaks departed in 1984 for church service. It was an interesting evening. I am glad I was able to attend, and take my wife, and daughter, Lindsay.
There were excerpts from court opinions in the late 1800’s from both Utah and Wisconsin when the first women were applying to practice law in both states. Surprisingly, the attitude from Wisconsin was condescending, critical, and discouraging toward women who wanted to be lawyers. But from Utah, there was praise and encouragement – even the expectation that women would add some degree of dignity and compassion to the profession.
Events like these serve to remind us how greatly things have changed in relatively recent times. Some of the things we take for granted have only recently occurred.
Societies which fail to educate, and allow women to influence every aspect of their lives are diminished by the failing. Advancement to the entire culture is tied to the education and contribution of women. They should be allowed every opportunity possible.
Today is Mother’s Day. Many of you will be getting a phone call from your missionary. My daughter will speak in Sacrament today. It’s a different daughter than the one who spoke for the last two years on Mother’s Day. Seems we can’t have it come without one of our daughters speaking.
My mother died years ago. I always remember her always on this date. She was a remarkable, stern, intelligent, spry, curious and faithful woman. Every morning at breakfast she would read a verse from the Bible to us, even though I did my best to feign disinterest. She persisted. Somehow, despite my own neglect of reading the Bible, when the missionaries taught me, I already knew most of the material they used from the Bible. Although she was not Mormon, her teaching was absolutely necessary for me to become what I am now.
She drug me to the Baptist Church every week, always hoping I’d become a Baptist. But the only church I ever joined was The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That was troubling to a devout Baptist. I’ve often said that throughout my childhood she was afraid I would go to hell. Then I became a Mormon and removed all doubt.
If your mother is still here, take time for her today. And if she’s gone, like mine, then take some time for your wife as mother of your children. I’m planning to go prepare dinner and then clean up afterwards. (Even if I go to KFC and use paper plates.)
The book based on this blog is now available for those who are interested. It can be ordered through Amazon and is titled Removing the Condemnation.
It is 568 pages and has no word index because I’m leaving this blog up for those who want to search for a word, topic, post or entry. The book is arranged by scriptural divisions. You can use this blog to locate a word or topic, find the scripture cite being discussed, and locate it within the book based on the scripture. It’s a little cumbersome, but adding a word index would have moved the book to well over 600 pages, at which point the cost would have gone up too much for my liking.
Let me reiterate that I do not make anything on what I write. That small portion of the book price which finds its way to me is donated to the church. There are, of course, those who publish, print, sell and ship books who do depend on the sale price for their living. I am a practicing attorney, and therefore do not.
I continue working to shepherd the book on restoration history along and hope it will be completed and available by fall, but there is no release date at present. I can only promise it will be out this year.
On a completely unrelated topic, tomorrow is Mother’s Day. Don’t forget your wives, mothers and sisters who are mothers tomorrow.
The final edit is a word/phrasing/punctuation/
We are looking into getting another printer to do hardback versions of all the books, because there have been requests for those.
He has prepared it for us. But it is our choice to take hold upon it. For that, our personal decision to repent remains at the core.
My response:
And so we settle for inspirational ditties in lieu of doctrine.
There’s a buzz going about some blogs on the book titled “Teachings of the Doctrine of Eternal Lives.” I was asked to put a note on my blog informing people that it can be obtained through Amazon.com or through Digitalegend.com at present in a printed form.
Apparently the book may not be available for long. I’m not sure what that fully involves, but I’m putting the announcement up as requested.
We have Family Home Evening on Sunday night, because of all the activities our family has. Between softball, soccer, lacrosse, girl scouts, Young Women, school play, and gymnastics we don’t have an available evening other than Sunday. Today the sister Missionaries were visiting, and were included in the lesson and treat. One of the sisters has been out five days. She’s from Hawaii. The other is from Ohio and is the trainer senior companion. Our next door neighbor has a daughter currently serving a mission in Kirtland, Ohio. She returns home in four days.
We are going to have the returning sister missionary speak to the Priests Quorum next month. The Bishop had to approve it, but he agreed a returning missionary is appropriate to instruct the Priests, even though she is a sister.
I was thinking about my home ward. We have a doctor who has serious physical ailments due to another physician’s malpractice. He is going to undergo experimental surgery at the U of U Medical Center to attempt to undo the serious disability currently afflicting him. (My ward includes so many physicians that as I write this I can’t be sure I’ve counted them all.) We have a member of the Draper Temple Presidency, Inner City Missionaries, English as a Second Language Missionaries, a Federal Judge, several families who have experienced the deaths of children, former Mission Presidents, skeptics, musicians, accountants, the strong and the weak. We have the faithful and the faithless in my ward. We have a family in which the father served a mission in Madagascar, where he met his wife. We have several families from Hong Kong and two from Korea. Our ward is a remarkable mix of ages, backgrounds, personalities and abilities.
I was thinking about how wonderful it is to have this arbitrary ward boundary where we are associated together by geographic division and not by preference for one another. We are expected to serve one another and with one another. Of all the benefits which come from the church, the association as a ward family with different, diverse people you have not sought to find is perhaps one of the greatest. It lets us stretch to serve. In many ways it mirrors our own families, where relationships are given us by God and choices others make in marriages. We do not control the make-up of our extended families, but are expected to love them anyway.