Apostle Says Religious Freedom Is Being Threatened - LDS Newsroom

Apostle Says Religious Freedom Is Being Threatened - LDS Newsroom

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Homeschooled????

A pretty funny video.

Free book

Thinking about homeschooling but still not sure? Going to homeschool but would like a good read on it?

Right now you can get "Homeschooling and Loving it!" by Rebecca Kochenrfeder. The founder of homeschool.com Get your free copy here, while supplies last.

Not on the test

This song sums up a lot.

The song is funny, but the truth behind it is sad.

Lathen is 5

I saw this article today. Lathen is five... it made me shudder to think about him learning such things not only at the young, tender age he is but by someone other than his parents. I still feel strongly that it is my duty as a parent to well, parent!


What are your thoughts?

Tim Hawkins - The Government Can

Hilarious and sad; this is one of those makes you laugh and cry.

Finally a post!

Quick disclaimer: I am not terrific at articulating myself through typing. I'm much better in person! So please keep that in mind when reading any of my post, thanks.

I have so many post that I think about, that I mean to write and then I never do. I either forget or get frustrated that when I sit to write it down it's never as good as it was when I first talked it through my head. But today I decided to just sit down and write at least one of them!

Today's post is about homeschooling. I've become keenly aware that it is often an uncomfortable place to find yourself when you tell someone that you are going to homeschool. Many are interested, some think it is wonderful, others are indifferent but some seem to be offended or openly disapproving. I'm not going to go into the details and studies on socialization, a common topic that is brought up. I just simply want to say that my choice to homeschool has nothing to do with your choice not to.

It seems as if some feel like I think I'm a better parent because I'm not sending my kids off to public school. Or they think I think they are bad parents because their kids are in public school. And to be honest it's a tough one to try and talk about without offending someone. If I say, "Yeah, I just don't feel comfortable with my kids going to public school." Or "I just don't think public school offers what it should" Or "I think my kids are better benefited by staying home." Others assume that I think poorly of them if they don't do as I'm doing. Well, let me just make it clear, homeschooling is a personal choice. It isn't for everyone. I am more than ok with your choice as a parent as to how your child will be educated.

Homeschooling, in my opinion, is a choice that each family has to prayerfully decide on. What is right for my family may not be right for yours. In the scriptures we find an example in two different families. We have the prophet Jeremiah who was commanded to stay in Jerusalem and preach, even though the people were extremely wicked and Jeremiah was imprisoned more than once. On the other hand we have the prophet Lehi who was commanded to leave Jerusalem and take his family into the wilderness. So to some you may feel it best to stay and to others you may feel it best to leave. I'm not judging you, so please don't judge me!

Giveaways!

The Ready Store is doing a giveaway. Who doesn't like free stuff?!!

Check out the giveaway here!

The habit to judge

I would say that just about everyone at some point has been guilty of judging wrongfully. I was raised that we shouldn't judge, but society preaches something completely different. I had a quick little moment of this a few weeks ago.

I was visiting a ward that I lived in for a short time back in 2007. At that time I was called to teach in the Young Women's program (girls ages 12-18). One of the girls suffered from, well to be honest I'm not sure. My guess would be autism. The first time I met her was on a Wednesday church night for the youth. The bishops wife was walking laps around the building with her and they were discussing Anamaniacs. This girl is super sweet, but is lacking in social skills and some other functions. It is easy, without the right amount of patience, for this kind girl to get on your nerves. During my visit back a few weeks ago the ward was having all the youth who attended early morning seminary share their testimonies about their experience. When this girl got up she shared a beautiful testimony and then said she was going to sing. I'm embarrassed to admit that my first thought was negative. (I've repented so stop judging me) The piano began and she opened her mouth. Angelic is the only word I can think of to discribe what I heard. Her words floated to my ears and pierced my heart. It was simple, simply beautiful.

How grateful I am for that experience. Another reminder that I am not perfect and I should never judge. I was humbled and then lifted.

She sang:

No Ordinary Man
Jesus was no ordinary man, but there
were some who did not understand.
They saw him working miracles, but
some were still deceived.
Why did they not believe?

When with few loaves and fishes the
multitudes were fed;
When He showed them His pow'r to heal,
and even raised the dead;
When He walked upon the water and He
calmed the raging sea,
Why did they not believe?

Jesus was no ordinary man, but there
were some who did not understand.
They saw him working miracles, but
some were still deceived.
Why did they not believe?

When His faith filled the fishnets; gave
sight unto the blind;
When they saw at His bidding even
water turned to wine;
When He offered all He had to them if
they would but receive,
Why did they not believe?

Jesus was no ordinary man. The pow'r to
bless and heal was in His hands.
They saw Him cleanse the leper, they saw
Him heal the lame;
They must have sensed divinity and
known from whence He came,
But understanding not His cause, they
crucified the Son of God,
And even then they did not understand
That Jesus was no ordinary man.

Amen.

I came across this on a friends blog (ok someone I secretly follow). Don't worry I let her know today with a comment that I've been reading, so don't judge me! Anyway, this article or acceptance speech is amazing and I had to share. You can go to the website here or read below. There are so many points he makes that are so profound and express how I feel...Enjoy!


The following is the text of a speech by John Taylor Gatto accepting the New York City Teacher of the Year Award on January 31, 1990. It is reprinted from the Iowa State Newsletter.

I accept this award on behalf of all the fine teachers I’ve known over the years who’ve struggled to make their transactions with children honourable ones, men and women who are never complacent, always questioning, always wrestling to define and redefine endlessly what the word “education” should mean. A Teacher of the Year is not the best teacher around, those people are too quiet to be easily uncovered, but he is a standard-bearer, symbolic of these private people who spend their lives gladly in the service of children. This is their award as well as mine.

We live in a time of great school crisis. We rank at the bottom of 19 industrial nations in reading, writing and arithmetic. At the very bottom. The world’s narcotic economy is based upon our own consumption of the commodity, if we didn’t buy so many powdered dreams the business would collapse — and schools are an important sales outlet. Our teenage suicide rate is the highest in the world and suicidal kids are rich kids for the most part, not the poor. In Manhattan 50% of all new marriages last less than five years. So something is wrong for sure.

This is a time of great school crisis and that crisis is interlinked with a greater social crisis in the general community. We seem to have lost our identity. Children and old people are penned up and locked away from the business of the world to a degree without precedent — nobody talks to them anymore and without children and old people mixing in daily life a community has no future and no past, only a continuous present. In fact, the name “community” hardly applies to the way we interact with each other. We live in networks, not communities, and everyone I know is lonely because of that. In some strange way school is a major actor in this tragedy just as it is a major actor in the widening guilt among social classes. Using school as a sorting mechanism we appear to be on the way to creating a caste system, complete with untouchables who wander through subway trains begging and sleep on the streets.

I’ve noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my 25 years of teaching — that schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aids and administrators but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions. Although teachers do care and do work very hard the institution is psychopathic, it has no conscience. It rings a bell and the young man in the middle of writing a poem must close his notebook and move to different cell where he must memorize that man and monkeys derive from a common ancestor.

Our form of compulsory schooling is an invention of the state of Massachusetts around 1850. It was resisted — sometimes with guns — by an estimated 80% of the Massachusetts population, the last outpost in Barnstable on Cape Cod not surrendering its children until the 1880’s when the area was seized by militia and children marched to school under guard.

Now here is a curious idea to ponder. Senator Ted Kennedy’s office released a paper not too long ago claiming that prior to compulsory education the state literacy rate was 98% and after it the figure never again reached above 91% where it stands in 1990. I hope that interests you.

Here is another curiosity to think about. The homeschooling movement has quietly grown to a size where one and a half million young people are being educated entirely by their own parents, last month the education press reported the amazing news that children schooled at home seem to be five or even 10 years ahead of their formally trained peers in their ability to think.

I don’t think we’ll get rid of schools anytime soon, certainly not in my lifetime, but if we’re going to change what’s rapidly becoming a disaster of ignorance we need to realize that the school institution “schools” very well, but it does not “educate” — that’s inherent in the design of the thing. It’s not the fault of bad teachers or too little money spent, it’s just impossible for education and schooling ever to be the same thing.

Schools were designed by Horace Mann and Barnard Sears and Harper of the University of Chicago and Thorndyke of Columbia Teachers College and some other men to be instruments of the scientific management of a mass population. Schools are intended to produce through the application of formulae, formulaic human beings whose behaviour can be predicted and controlled.

To a very great extent schools succeed in doing this, but in a national order increasingly disintegrated, in a national order in which only humanly successful people are independent, self-reliant, confident, and individualistic (because community life which protects the dependent and weak is dead and only networks remain), the products of schooling are, as I’ve said, irrelevant. Well-schooled people are irrelevant. They can sell film and razor blades, push paper and talk on the telephones, or sit mindlessly before a flickering computer terminal but as human beings they are useless. Useless to others and useless to themselves.

The daily misery around us is, I think in large measure caused by the fact that — as Paul Goodman put it 30 years ago — we force children to grow up absurd. Any reform in schooling has to deal with its absurdities.

It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to sit in confinement with people of exactly the same age and social class. That system effectively cuts you off from the immense diversity of life and the synergy of variety, indeed it cuts you off from your own part and future, scaling you to a continuous present much the same way television does.

It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to listen to a stranger reading poetry when you want to learn to construct buildings, or to sit with a stranger discussing the construction of buildings when you want to read poetry.

It is absurd and anti-life to move from cell to cell at the sound of a gong for every day of your natural youth in an institution that allows you no privacy and even follows you into the sanctuary of your home demanding that you do its “homework”.

“How will they learn to read?!” you say and my answer is “Remember the lessons of Massachusetts.” When children are given whole lives instead of age-graded ones in cellblocks they learn to read, write, and do arithmetic with ease if those things make sense in the kind of life that unfolds around them.

But keep in mind that in the United States almost nobody who reads, writes or does arithmetic gets much respect. We are a land of talkers, we pay talkers the most and admire talkers the most and so our children talk constantly, following the public models of television and school teachers. It is very difficult to teach the “basics” anymore because they really aren’t basic to the society we’ve made.

Two institutions at present control our children’s lives — television and schooling, in that order. Both of these reduce the real world of wisdom, fortitude, temperance, and justice to a never-ending, non-stopping abstraction. In centuries past the time of a child and adolescent would be occupied in real work, real charity, real adventures, and the realistic search for mentors who might teach what you really wanted to learn. A great deal of time was spent in community pursuits, practicing affection, meeting and studying every level of the community, learning how to make a home, and dozens of other tasks necessary to become a whole man or woman.

But here is the calculus of time the children I teach must deal with:

* Out of 168 hours in each week my children sleep 56. That leaves them 112 hours a week out of which to fashion a self.
* My children watch 55 hours of television a week according to recent reports. That leaves them 57 hours a week in which to grow up.
* My children attend school 30 hours a week, use about 6 hours getting ready, going and coming home, and spend an average of 7 hours a week in homework, a total of 45 hours.

During that time they are under constant surveillance, have no private time or private space, and are disciplined if they try to assert individuality in the use of time or space. That leaves 12 hours a week out of which to create a unique consciousness. Of course, my kids eat, and that takes some time–not much because they’ve lost the tradition of family dining, but if we allot 3 hours a week to evening meals we arrive at a net amount of private time for each child of 9 hours.

It’s not enough. It’s not enough, is it? The richer the kid, or course, the less television he watches but the rich kid’s time is just as narrowly proscribed by a somewhat broader catalogue of commercial entertainments and his inevitable assignment to a series of private lessons in areas seldom of his actual choice.

And these things are oddly enough just a more cosmetic way to create dependent human beings, unable to fill their own hours, unable to initiate lines of meaning to give substance and pleasure to their existence. It’s a national disease, this dependency, and aimlessness, and I think schooling and television and lessons — the entire Chautauqua idea — has a lot to do with it.

Think of the things that are killing us as a nation — narcotic drugs, brainless competition, recreational sex, the pornography of violence, gambling, alcohol, and the worst pornography of all — lives devoted to buying things, accumulation as a philosophy, all of them are additions of dependent personalities and that is what our brand of schooling must inevitably produce.

I want to tell you what the effect is on children of taking all their time from them — time they need to grow up — and forcing them to spend it on abstractions. You need to hear this because no reform that doesn’t attack these specific pathologies will be anything more than a facade.

1. The children I teach are indifferent to the adult world. This defies the experience of thousands of years. A close study of what big people were up to was always the most exciting occupation of youth, but nobody wants to grow up these days and who can blame them? Toys are us.
2. The children I teach have almost no curiosity and what they do have is transitory; they cannot concentrate for very long, even on things they choose to do. Can you see a connection between the bells ringing again and again to change classes and this phenomenon of evanescent attention?
3. The children I teach have a poor sense of the future, of how tomorrow is inextricably linked to today. As I said before, they have a continuous present, the exact moment they are at is the boundary of their consciousness.
4. The children I teach are ahistorical, they have no sense of how past has predestined their own present, limiting their choices, shaping their values and lives.
5. The children I teach are cruel to each other, they lack compassion for misfortune, they laugh at weakness, they have contempt for people whose need for help shows too plainly.
6. The children I teach are uneasy with intimacy or candour. My guess is that they are like many adopted people I’ve known in this respect — they cannot deal with genuine intimacy because of a lifelong habit of preserving a secret inner self inside a larger outer personality made up of artificial bits and pieces of behaviour borrowed from television or acquired to manipulate teachers. Because they are not who they represent themselves to be the disguise wears thin in the presence of intimacy so intimate relationships have to be avoided.
7. The children I teach are materialistic, following the lead of school teachers who materialistically “grade” everything — and television mentors who offer everything in the world for free.
8. The children I teach are dependent, passive, and timid in the presence of new challenges. This is frequently masked by surface bravado, or by anger or aggressiveness but underneath is a vacuum without fortitude.

I could name a few other conditions that school reform would have to tackle if our national decline is to be arrested, but by now you will have grasped my thesis, whether you agree with it or not. Either schools have caused these pathologies or television or both. It’s a simple matter [of] arithmetic, between schooling and television all the time the children have is eaten away. That’s what has destroyed the American family, it is no longer a factor in the education of its own children. Television and schooling, in those things the fault must lie.

What can be done? First we need a ferocious national debate that doesn’t quit, day after day, year after year. We need to scream and argue about this school thing until it is fixed or broken beyond repair, one or the other. If we can fix it, fine; if we cannot then the success of homeschooling shows a different road to take that has great promise. Pouring the money we now pour into family education might kill two birds with one stone, repairing families as it repairs children.

Genuine reform is possible but it shouldn’t cost anything. We need to rethink the fundamental premises of schooling and decide what it is we want all children to learn and why. For 140 years this nation has tried to impose objectives downward from the lofty command centre made up of “experts”, a central elite of social engineers. It hasn’t worked. It won’t work. And it is a gross betrayal of the democratic promise that once made this nation a noble experiment. the Russian attempt to create Plato’s republic in Eastern Europe has exploded before [our] eyes, our own attempt to impose the same sort of central orthodoxy using the schools as an instrument is also coming apart at the seams, albeit more slowly and painfully. It doesn’t work because it’s fundamental premises are mechanical, anti-human, and hostile to family life. Lives can be controlled by machine education but they will always fight back with weapons of social pathology — drugs, violence, self-destruction, indifference, and the symptoms I see in the children I teach.

It’s high time we looked backwards to regain an educational philosophy that works. One I like particularly well has been a favourite of the ruling classes of Europe for thousands of years. I use as much of it as I can manage in my own teaching, as much, that is, as I can get away with given the present institution of compulsory schooling. I think it works just as well for poor children as for rich ones.

At the core of this elite system of education is the belief that self-knowledge is the only basis of true knowledge. Everywhere in this system, at every age, you will find arrangements to place the child alone in an unguided setting with a problem to solve. Sometimes the problem is fraught with great risks, such as the problem of galloping a horse or making it jump, but that, of course, is a problem successfully solved by thousands of elite children before the age of ten. Can you imagine anyone who had mastered such a challenge ever lacking confidence in his ability to do anything? Sometimes the problem is the problem of mastering solitude, as Thoreau did at Walden pond, or Einstein did in the Swiss customs house.

One of my former students, Roland Legiardi-Lura, though both his parents were dead and he had no inheritance, took a bicycle across the United States alone when he was hardly out of boyhood. Is it any wonder then that in manhood when he decided to make a film about Nicaragua, although he had no money and no prior experience with film-making, that it was an international award-winner — even though his regular work was as a carpenter.

Right now we are taking all the time from our children that they need to develop self-knowledge. That has to stop. We have to invent school experiences that give a lot of that time back, we need to trust children from a very early age with independent study, perhaps arranged in school but which takes place away from the institutional setting. We need to invent curriculum where each kid has a chance to develop private uniqueness and self-reliance.

A short time ago I took $70 and sent a 12-year-old girl from my class with her non-English speaking mother on a bus down the New Jersey coast to take the police chief of Sea Bright to lunch and apologize for polluting [his] beach with a discarded Gatorade bottle. In exchange for this public apology I had arranged with the police chief for the girl to have a one-day apprenticeship in a small town police procedures. A few days later two more of my 12-year-old kids traveled alone to West First Street from Harlem where they began an apprenticeship with a newspaper editor, next week three of my kids will find themselves in the middle of the Jersey swamps at 6 A.M. in the morning studying the mind of a trucking company president as he dispatches 18-wheelers to Dallas, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

Are these “special” children in a “special” program? Well, in one sense, yes, but nobody knows about this program but myself and the kids. They’re just nice kids from Central Harlem, bright and alert, but so badly schooled when they came to me that most of them can’t add or subtract with any fluency. And not a single one knew the population of New York City or how far it is from New York to California.

Does that worry me? Of course, but I am confident that as they gain self-knowledge they’ll also become self-teachers — and only self-teaching has any lasting value.

We’ve got to give kids independent time right away because that is the key to self-knowledge, and we must re-involve them with the real world as fast as possible so that the independent time can be spent on something other than more abstraction. This is an emergency, it requires drastic action to correct — our children are dying like flies in schooling, good schooling or bad schooling, it’s all the same. Irrelevant.

What else does a restructured school system need? It needs to stop being a parasite on the working community. Of all the pages in the human ledger, only our tortured entry has warehoused children and asked nothing of them in service to the general good. For a while I think we need to make community service a required part of schooling. Besides the experience in acting unselfishly that will teach, it is the quickest way to give young children real responsibility in the mainstream of life.

For five years I ran a guerrilla program where I had every kid, rich and poor, smart and dipsy, give 320 hours a year of hard community service. Dozens of those kids came back to me years later, grown up, and told me that one experience of helping someone else changed their lives. It taught them to see in new ways, to rethink goals and values. It happened when they were 13, in my Lab School program — only made possible because my rich school district was in chaos. When “stability” returned the Lab was closed. It was too successful with a wildly mixed group of kids, at too small of a cost, to be allowed to continue. We made the expensive elite programs look bad.

There is no shortage of real problems in the city. Kids can be asked to help solve them in exchange for the respect and attention of the total adult world. Good for kids, good for all the rest of us. That’s curriculum that teaches Justice, one of the four cardinal virtues in every system of elite education. What’s sauce for the rich and powerful is surely sauce for the rest of us — what is more, the idea is absolutely free as are all other genuine reform ideas in education. Extra money and extra people put into this sick institution will only make it sicker.

Independent study, community service, adventures in experience, large doses of privacy and solitude, a thousand different apprenticeships, the one day variety or longer — these are all powerful, cheap and effective ways to start a real reform of schooling. But no large-scale reform is ever going to work to repair our damaged children and our damaged society until we force the idea of “school” open — to include FAMILY as the main engine of education. The Swedes realized that in 1976 when they effectively abandoned the system of adopting unwanted children and instead spent national time and treasure on reinforcing the original family so that children born to Swedes were wanted. They didn’t succeed completely but they did succeed in reducing the number of unwanted Swedish children from 6000 in l976 to 15 in 1986. So it can be done. The Swedes just got tired of paying for the social wreckage caused by children not raised by their natural parents so they did something about it. We can, too.

FAMILY is the main engine of education. If we use schooling to break children away from parents — and make no mistake, that has been the central function of schools since John Cotton announced it as the purpose of the Bay Colony schools in 1650 and Horace Mann announced it as the purpose of Massachusetts schools in 1850 — we’re going to continue to have the horror show we have right now. THE CURRICULUM OF FAMILY is at the heart of any good life, we’ve gotten away from that curriculum, time to return to it. The way to sanity in education is for our schools to take the lead in releasing the stranglehold of institutions on family life, to promote during school time confluences of parent and child that will strengthen family bonds. That was my real purpose in sending the girl and her mother down the Jersey coast to meet the police chief. I have many ideas to make a family curriculum and my guess is that a lot of you will have many ideas, too, once you begin to think about it. Our greatest problem in getting the kind of grass-roots thinking going that could reform schooling is that we have large vested interests pre-emptying all the air time and profiting from schooling just exactly as it is despite rhetoric to the contrary. We have to demand that new voices and new ideas get a hearing, my ideas and yours. We’ve all had a bellyful of authorized voices mediated by television and the press — a decade long free-for-all debate is what is called for now, not any more “expert” opinions. Experts in education have never been right, their “solutions” are expensive, self-serving, and always involve further centralization. Enough. Time for a return to Democracy, Individuality, and Family. I’ve said my piece. Thank you.

from snot to puberty

For a year now I've worked with the Primary kids at church (that would be the 18 months to 11-years-old). Don't get me wrong I love kids and I know that each one of those precious kids are a child of God, but it was not an easy calling.

I've discovered something about myself. I grew up loving kids. I was the baby holder at church, but something has changed. Now that I have my own kids I've noticed that I'm not so big on other peoples kids. I like them, but it's not the same. There's nothing like holding a crying kid who wants their mommy and it not be your kid. Then to have that kid lift it's head from your shoulder and have snot string from your shoulder all the way up to their little nose. NASTY! I'm sorry, but I'm not a big fan of my kids snot. Another kids snot is just awful.

Then you go into nursery (that's where all the 18 month to 3-years-old play) and you notice that every kid, every last one including your own has their finger buried in the nose. What are they expecting to find up there?!

Then there's all the coughing and sneezing...ugh!

So after a year of loving these sweet, snotty gems I got a new calling. Now I get to work with the 12 to 18-years-old. Ah, the puberty stricken teenie boppers.

Wish me luck!

Capitalism based on selfishness?!

There is a lot of talk about capitalism (what our country was founded on) and socialism (what it feels like we are being led into). I read this article today from Glenn Beck and felt like, yeah!

You can either click on the link or you can just read below as I have copied and pasted the article below. Oh and be sure to tell me what you think!


GLENN: From Radio City in Midtown Manhattan, hello, you sick twisted freak. Welcome to the program. I'm glad you're here. Ashley is with us from Oklahoma and KTOK. Hello, Ashley.

CALLER: Hi.

GLENN: What is ‑‑ where do you go to school, Ashley?

CALLER: It's a very conservative Christian university in Oklahoma.

GLENN: A very ‑‑ is it the one with the big praying hands?

CALLER: No.

GLENN: You don't want to say? Okay. It's a very conservative Christian school in Oklahoma.

CALLER: Yes. It's a Baptist College.

GLENN: Got it, okay. So what happened with you and your professor?

CALLER: Well, I'm in an ethics course, a biblical ethics course, and he put up a quote on the board about capitalism like having this derogatory meaning with it, and I said, well, what's wrong with capitalism? And he said, capitalism's based on selfishness. It's about getting as much as you can for yourself. And I said, no ‑‑

GLENN: That's his perversion of it. But go ahead.

CALLER: Yeah. And I said, well, capitalism's based on hard work. It's about getting reward for hard work. And well, he told me, no, it's about making money off of other people; it's not about hard work. It's about ‑‑

GLENN: So what is his, what is his replacement for capitalism?

CALLER: Socialism.

GLENN: Socialism?

CALLER: Yeah, he says that the Bible ‑‑

GLENN: This is a Christian ‑‑ hang on. This is a Christian ethics teacher?

CALLER: Yes.

GLENN: Okay. And he said what? The Bible says what?

CALLER: He said the Bible supports socialism.

GLENN: Where?

CALLER: Well, there's this scripture in Acts about ‑‑ that's always used about the early church sharing their possessions.

GLENN: Yes.

CALLER: So I ‑‑

GLENN: The church did.

CALLER: ‑‑ wrote a paper on capitalism as a biblical basis. So I turned that in. I don't know if he will like it or not.

GLENN: Look, here's the thing. Tithing and the 10%, Moses, tithe 10%, right? What did they try to do before tithing? What did Moses actually come out with? Do you know? What was tithing? Before it was 10%, what was it before that? The law of?

CALLER: I'm not sure.

GLENN: The law of?

CALLER: Oh, yeah, okay.

GLENN: The law of consecration, which means you take all of your money and you give it to Moses. You give all of your money to your church, 100% and then you take only that that you need, okay? Moses couldn't make that work and so the law of consecration was too difficult for the people with the guy who parted the Red Sea and so they went down to a 10% tithing rule: Give 10%, okay? When Jesus was talking about ‑‑ when the apostles were talking about the early church where they shared everything, that's the law of consecration, and people have led lives of the law of consecration before and since. People have lived it many times. However, the secret is nowhere in the Bible does the ‑‑ do any of the apostles or Jesus say give all of your money to the government. They gave it to their church, and the church, nowhere did the apostles say we're going to take it from members of the church. They, keyword, shared everything they had.

Now, your professor can talk all he wants about how evil capitalism is, but ask your professor why Adam and Eve came down. Why, what was the whole thing about with the snake and the apple? What was that all about?

CALLER: Because they disobeyed God.

GLENN: Yeah, but what did that do? If Adam and Eve could ‑‑ if Adam and Eve didn't have the apple, they wouldn't have been fruitful and multiplied. Man would not be if it wasn't for that, okay? So what did they do? They ate the apple. Their eyes were opened. They saw the difference between good and evil, and the Lord drove them out of paradise and let them live this life where you've got to make choices and there's bad and there's good. We are here to make choices. You ask your professor, how am I supposed to be a good Christian, how am I supposed to better myself if all of my decisions are made for me by the state. If I can only eat these things, if I can only do these things, if I can only have this much money, if I'm forced to share, how does anyone grow spiritually? How do you become Gandhi if everything is decided for you? If this was the plan of salvation, if this is the plan of heaven, if this is God's plan, why didn't he just go with Lucifer's plan of just, I'll bring every soul back to you, God; you give the glory to me. I'll make sure. I'm not going to give them any choice. I'll bring everyone back. Jesus said, no, no, no, no; go down, let them have free will, let them have choice. But they are going to make so many mistakes, they are going to need a savior to come down and wash them clean. Now, if God didn't care about choice, if God was just like, you know what, just force them to do these things, it seems to me he would have gone with Lucifer's plan and not the other plan. Does that make sense to you?

CALLER: Yeah. And I ‑‑ one of the things I told him is that when Jesus commands us to give, I think that in a socialist society when our money's taken away from us by taxes, that's not really Jesus' definition of giving.

GLENN: No, did he say ‑‑ go quote the scripture to your professor. Ask him, did Jesus say when a man asks for your shirt, you give the government your coat, also, and have the government give that coat to the man? No. The government is a middleman. The government is acting in the role of Lucifer. They are taking stuff from you. They are forcing you ‑‑ yes, I did, I did just say, yes, the government is the devil. They are taking your choices from you. There is ‑‑ you ask your professor this. I hope you're writing this stuff down and I want to hear the answers from this nut job of a professor. You ask this ‑‑ you ask your professor this: At what point ‑‑ now, jeez, I just lost it. What were we talking about before that? The government is the devil, I remember that.

CALLER: The government is Satan.

GLENN: I remember that one clearly. I can't remember the last one. Yeah, you just, you just ask your professor where in the scriptures does it teach about a middleman. It teaches you to go right directly to the source. Where ‑‑ you ask your professor this: On April 15th does he feel charitable.

CALLER: Right.

GLENN: As charitable on April 15th as he does when he goes and visits a soup kitchen and works there, when he goes and visits sick people in the hospital, when he stops off the side of the highway to help somebody whose car is broken down? Does he have that same warm confirming spirit with him on April 15th? The answer is no. Because the spirit wouldn't confirm April 15th. It's taken from you. Giving is about your heart. Taxes don't engage your heart. They engage another part that is down, usually kept in the wallet region. Ashley, you ask him those questions. You call us back, all right?

CALLER: Okay. Thank you.

GLENN: All right. Thank you. Jeez. I mean, from a Christian: Capitalism is evil. Capitalism is freedom. What we do with capitalism is evil sometimes. Capitalism, capitalism is evil. Really? Tell that to Bill Gates, who has taken, what is it, a billion dollars and given it to cure malaria, given it to help people all over the world. You tell Wal‑Mart that capitalism is evil as they are writing out the largest check of any corporation for charity on planet Earth, every year. You tell them that capitalism is evil. You tell they happen that capitalism is evil when you look at the Jon Huntsman cancer center. Written by a capitalist. The check written by a capitalist. The funds taken from capitalism. You do that. You tell him that. Capitalism is evil? You tell me that capitalism is evil when you look at what Washington has built on the backs of capitalists. If capitalism was evil, if capitalism didn't exist, we wouldn't have this country. We wouldn't have what the government has because the government didn't create anything; it took it from us! Show me the dollars that they have made themselves, except for recently because they're printing those off right now show me the things the government has built on its own, except for a war machine. They haven't invented or built one thing. They went to capitalists and entrepreneurs and said we need something that does this, and they built it. Don't tell me that capitalism is evil. Your choices can be evil or your choices can be good. But in this country the individual choice is what mattered. But we have so perverted God's will, God's law, we have so perverted what our founding fathers ‑‑ so let me ask you this, Mr. Professor: Do you believe this country was founded on divine providence? Do you believe that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, Madison, Adams, do you believe those men were enlightened men? I do. Well, their crazy idea was to allow men to be free and free in their own business to allow them to be able to engage in capitalism. I didn't think a bad tree could bear good fruit. I didn't know a good tree could bear bad fruit or bad trees bear good fruit. I didn't think that was possible. I've read that some place in some big thick book. You'd know better than I do because you're a professor, and the elite professors always have the right answer.

Blah

I'm having one of those days. One of those leave-me-alone-don't-touch-me, kind of days. I have zero patience and all I want to do is crawl back in my bed and sleep it off.

So don't call or come by today because I'm not in the mood.

The loss of a child

I'm not sure there is anything in this life that compares to the loss of a child. No matter the age, whether born or unborn the pain is deep. But the lessons learned are sweeter than words can describe. We lost our baby 20 months ago. 14 weeks I got to carry that child and I wouldn't give those weeks up for all the joy in the world. I have a testimony that I will see that child again.

My mother, sister-in-law, a dear friend and myself are doing a book club together. This months book is by Pamela H. Hansen, an amazing woman. We are reading her book titled Finding the Angel Within. In her book she shares her many trials including the loss of a twin. She was pregnant with twin girls and she found out that one of the twins Emily, had a fatal heart defect and wouldn't live long after birth. She gave birth to Emily and her sister Amy and soon after birth Emily passed on. Her mother wrote a poem about Emily that Pamela shares in her book. I read this poem and was touched deeply. I had to share. So to all those who have lost, or have known someone who has lost:

Our Emily
By Carolee L. Harmon

This day-old child who just arrived
with tiny mouth and hands
Will soon be going home again
obeying divine commands.
But wait...we have so many plans for her
it really seems unfair.
Bedtime stories and nursery rhymes
and secrets sweet to share.
Valentines and cookies to make,
cousins for her to know.
We want to buy her dolls and books
and watch her talents grow.
She needs to feel the seasons change,
giggle with friends among.
Blow candles out on frosted cakes
when "Happy Birthday" is sung!
We want to teach her things of Thee
with loving, kind concern
And sing our favorite Primary songs
So much for her to learn!
But wiser, she, than all of us
wrinkles her little nose
As if to say: "He needs me more
than you do, I suppose...
So I'll go back to Heavenly Father,
my mission here is done
But He'll let Amy fill your hearts
with twice the joy and fun.
I came to gain a body,
claim these parents for my own
We're now a family unit
so I'll never be alone.
Such happiness! To know I'm loved
and fulfilled my part with birth.
You have to live with much more faith
to stay here on the earth.
This day I spent with you's enough...
My dad gave me a blessing
The hardest part is leaving
Mommy's arms, I am confessing..."
Then she was gone. But this thought dwells:
What she brought, none can sever
And if we do our part - we'll be
A family forever!

Should I be alarmed?!

My daughter has a baby doll that makes sounds and such. It tells her it's hungry, or wants a book read to it, or that it needs a new diaper etc. But to make the baby laugh you shake it.

For some reason I can't help but think that this isn't the best thing to teach a child. Shake a baby and it will laugh, who designs these toys?!

Potty time

I would say that most moms can relate to the 'no privacy' concept when it comes to kids. If your house is anything like our house you get an attentive audience for all sorts of special moments. Whether it's taking a shower, changing clothes or going to the bathroom my kids feel like they must, at least at some point be there for the um action?

For some reason no one felt it necessary to let me know that when I became a mother I would have to kiss my dignity goodbye.

Ever had this moment? You are using the bathroom and one or more children suddenly need to sit in your lap more than anything else?! Nothing like sitting on the toilet doing what you do on the toilet and having a kid on your lap. Oh yes, I've tried the shut-and-lock the door technique, but that just ends in banging, screaming and crying; "Mom, MOM let me in!"

So if my dignity left when my kids felt it their duty to supervise my going to the bathroom time, what do I say left when another persons child joins my own children in this tradition?!

Yep, that's right not only do my children want to be there and watch, but so does the little girl I watch. And you guessed it she feels like it's the perfect time to sit in my lap? What would her mother say if she knew? Too bad I'll never tell her.

My brother posted what he learned about using a public toilet in this post. So to that I add what I've learned about using any toilet when you have kids.

1. There is no such thing as privacy
2. Kids have no concept of "Yuck, don't touch that!"
3. Even if you lock the door, there is no such thing as peace and quiet when using the bathroom.
4. Using the bathroom in front of your children will open the door to all sorts of questions. Usually questions you aren't ready to explain yet to persons under the age of 13!
5. A child's curiosity will lead them to ask things like "Can I see?!"
6. Kids don't care what you are doing, if they want to sit in your lap they will sit in your lap.
7. You will find yourself repeating "Yes, Mommy is a girl. No, Daddy is a boy. That's right Daddy has a penis. No, Mommy doesn't have a penis."
8. Amazingly it never gets old for kids.

What would you add to the list?!

Saying it like it is

Conversation my husband had at work with the mother of the little girl I now watch all day.

Mother: Some women are just meant to be moms. Like your wife, she was just meant to be a mom. I was just meant to be a business woman.

My husband: No, you were meant to be a mom.

And then he walked away.

Why have kids?

It never ceases to amaze me the people who have kids for show. Like they are some sort of accessory or status symbol. They have kids and then let others raise them, makes no sense to me.

So I keep a little girl now. She is 16 months old. She is adorable. She use to be watched my her grandma, but grandma's schedule changed and she can't watch her anymore. When the parents of this child sat down to talk about what they should do the mother mentioned that maybe she should just stay home. Then they decided that she couldn't because they need her income. I mean they have two cars, a house, cable tv, cell phones, blah blah blah. So if I'm understand correctly they would rather have stuff than kids? So why did they have kids in the first place?

Now, this has nothing to do with those who actually have to work. And no, having a ton of stuff to pay for does not fall into that category. I'm talking about those people who by no fault of their own are finding themselves working to put food on the table.

I just don't understand. Why would having a nice car or a big house be more important than raising your own kids? David O. McKay once said, "No success can compensate for failure in the home." And they are leaving that success up to someone else.

How about you step off the materialistic train and see what treasure you really have?!

Meeting new people

My mom can talk to anyone. She can tell you her life story in the grocery line. It's a talent she has. It's also something that I disliked growing up. I guess I always sort of got embarrassed. Now that I'm grown I appreciate the fact that it's a talent and not just a means to embarrass me.

Although I look like my mom and I talk like her and move like her I didn't get the talk-to-anybody-about-anything talent. So imagine my surprise today when the following happened at the park:

I got to the park today with my two kids and a little 16 month old girl that I keep (more about that to come). Soon after my arrival a dad with his two kids showed up. Sasperilly quickly took to talking to this stranger (wonder where he gets it?) Strangers make me nervous. I have a bit of a pedophilia phobia, so I edged over to manage things. Soon I found myself talking to the stranger. He was super nice. The next thing I know I'm spilling all sorts of personal life experiences with him! I couldn't believe it. We talked all about life and health (he's in the fitness industry). I ended up with his business card and plans to catch him again sometime at the park. What?! Did I just do that?

I have to admit that getting his business card with all his personal information on it did make me feel better. Oh and the fact that he really wants me to met his wife that helped too.

It turns out he is big into fitness, especially kids fitness. He works at a YMCA and has started his own company All Kids Fit.

Here's to cracking the shell and poking my head out. Although I think I stuck more than my head out...