Postmodern Pastoral

There's a video going viral of some guy asking BYU students if they'd rather take a sip of alcohol or kill a puppy. And lots of students say they'd rather kill a puppy.  This video drives me insane. That hypothetical is so ridiculous. Nobody will ever be in a situation where they have to take a sip of alcohol or kill a puppy. This is not a good faith question. Like, does the interviewer have any respect for the BYU students he interviews? No he doesn't. It's a manipulative question to try to make Mormons look like idiots. And of course the video doesn't allow any discussion of why they'd rather kill a puppy. Which would add some compassion and open-mindedness to the conversation. This question assumes two moral claims: killing puppies is bad and keeping your religious health code is stupid. Those two things shouldn't ever be compared, they're just two totally different things. This hypothetical question is so stupid. This question puts the Mormon kid...

Mourning the loss of The Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration. There's a beautiful monastery on Speedway & Country Club many Tucsonans love, I loved going into the chapel in the evenings and listening to the sisters pray. I even prayed along with them a few times. They basically prayed all day everyday. Nuns are incredibly patient people. They housed undocumented migrants there, which is very important for society on the border. They believed in giving charity to everyone, despite their citizenship. I love Tucson so much, it's an incredible place. I don't know why the Catholic Church shut it down. Maybe they couldn't get new nuns to live there, I could never live that life. Maybe the Catholic Church operates like a business that just shuts down smaller branches when they don't bring in enough profit. Maybe luxury apartment businesses were putting pressure on the church to shut it down. Or maybe Republicans didn't like having a sanctuary for undocumente...

 My dear friend Nate picked me up at 4 am to drive me to the Juneau airport. There was a man waiting on the sidewalk outside my apartment complex and he said his ride was running really late but he had to get to the ferry, so I asked Nate if he could drive this guy too. It was raining of course. It would have been nice to spend my last 20 minutes in Juneau alone with Nate. He and I had some good talks, real talks that you can't really feel comfortable doing in front of strangers. Took a plane to the Seattle airport, then a train to Barry's gym. The ads on Instagram got me, it looked like a gay-friendly gym. And it was. They played Troye Sivan and Whitney Houston while we worked out, all the guys wore really short shorts. It was way too expensive though. I wanted to go to church, but it was general conference that day. And I was also supposed to hang out with Cecily, but she was hunting for mushrooms. I had a photoshoot that afternoon. My body is probably the best it'll ever...