Jots and Thoughts of Jenny

To make sense of the next blog post that's stewing in the back of my head, I need to give a little background. Can we stop calling people "good people" the way we do right now? What's that phrase even supposed to mean? I don't think there are many people on earth who are actually straight-up evil. As a result, a "good person" in our nomenclature has become most commonly someone who looks like us, perhaps as an extension of that, someone who makes similar mistakes as us. Then when it turns out a "good person" behaved in a way that we disagree with, but not too strongly, we say, "Oh, but they're a good person," as in, "This isn't that big of a deal." Or, if someone tells us that individual has done something we really don't agree with, it becomes, "I just cannot believe they did that. They're a good person," almost as though your opinion of them as a good person makes them above any such mistakes. Or ...

I've got a set of three blog posts bottled up that are related to our upcoming election in the United States, but I'd prefer to keep them all as non-partisan as I can. I don't mind sharing my views (feel free to ask--some of them will probably be easy to discern anyway), but I'm actually sort of sick of seeing the partisan fighting, and so I'm going to try doing what I've been told is always a good idea in writing: writing the blog post(s) I wish I could read right now. Last night I listened to a panel discussion from three well-respected and fairly impressive journalists that I thought was supposed to be about race and democracy. To be fair, they did address that topic somewhat, and I appreciated some of the points they made. However, an awful lot of the panel discussion ended up being a rant (from all three of them) against a particular candidate. And this ranting was (mostly) on-topic, and for the most part I felt like what they said was fair, so I mostly tri...

This week I had two heart-rendingly difficult communications with friends who I admire and respect about the subject of racism in the United States. I’ll start with the second. My friend told me that she just felt hopeless. That she didn’t see an end. That she didn’t see a solution. That she had been so badly hurt by the members of the church that we both belong to and believe holds the truth that she couldn’t bring herself to attend anymore. This isn’t someone who is weak, uneducated, seeking power, or angry with people who are trying their best. This is someone who is strong, intelligent, educated, humble, and sincere. And she feels hopeless because she knows that in a month (or less), people like me will have moved on and stopped listening. How could I have been so blind to her pain? Especially when I consider myself a disciple of Christ, to whom this friend is every bit as valuable as myself? Before I explain the other conversation, I have to say that this friend is practically a ...

This is going to be a very scattered post because I have probably ten million things to say about this and I know if it’s too long no one is going to want to read it. But I want to be real with you right now. “Judge not.” Christ gave us this commandment directly, straight outta the Sermon on the Mount. Why? Probably for a ton of different reasons, but one of the most intimidating, in my opinion, is the one that He cites Himself. “That ye be not judged.” He goes on to explain that we’ll be measured by the same stick we hold up against others, although in prettier terms. This scripture (Matthew 7:1, by the way) could probably take up at least one post of my jots and thoughts, probably more, for all the different implications it has for us and the nuances of phrase and whatever else Christ says about judging elsewhere. But that’s not where I’m going with this right now. Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve started seeing the phrase, “Let people live” a lot lately, and if it’s not me then I will a...

Happy New Year! Why do we celebrate the beginning of a new year? Why do we like making new year's resolutions? After all, don't most of us break half of those within the first 24 hours and then break most of the rest within the first week? Some of the really disciplined people make it a few months, but often by the end of the next year many of us can't even remember most of our "resolutions," let alone have them achieved. So why do we do it? What's even the point? Let's talk faith and repentance, and their relationship. What's faith? According to the Apostle Paul, "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1). The prophet Alma said that "faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true" (Alma 32:21). Well, what does that mean? How do you have evidence of something you can't see? How can you...

"'What if Christmas,' he thought, 'doesn't come from a store. What if Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more?'" --Dr. Suess ("How the Grinch Stole Christmas") What does Christmas mean to me? Whatever the historical origins of the holiday we now know as Christmas are, Christmas, to me, is first and foremost the celebration and commemoration of the birth of the Savior and Redeemer of the world. More than that, the birth of my Savior and Redeemer. Mosiah 3:5-8 from the Book of Mormon really caught my attention as I was considering its applications to me. "...The Lord Omnipotent who reigneth, who was, and is from all eternity to all eternity, shall come down from heaven among the children of men, and shall dwell in a tabernacle of clay, and shall go forth amongst men, working mighty miracles, such as healing the sick, raising the dead, causing the lame to walk, the blind to receive their sight, and the deaf to hear, and curing all m...