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...

 Something I find fascinating is the distrust heterosexual men and women have for each other. Despite being mutually attracted sexually and romantically. This is what I've observed, please comment to let me know if your observations are different. I'm conducting some anthropological research on the heterosexual psychology. Lol. I have a lot of girlfriends (girlfriend in the gay way obviously) who say they like gay men because they feel safe around gay men. Implying there is some kind of threat from straight guys. This can be terrifying for the straight man, and the threat is like, so abstract. He knows he's a threat, but doesn't understand why, because he feels like he's a nice normal person. A straight man might think "geez Louise if I even breathe wrong I will be seen as a threat! I can't do anything!"  There is some responsibility on the women to understand why she feels those threats. I'd appreciate it if the threatened feelings were more clear...

 My only goal in life is to die in a way that doesn't cause too much sadness or anger, and go relatively quietly. The general idea is to be 95 years old, living in Tucson, probably in a nursing home where my death is routine for the employees there. I want a traditional funeral, I want to be embalmed and have a viewing, lots of white roses and an oakwood casket (maybe particle board with a vinyl coat that looks like oak). I want an average funeral, people sharing cute stories about me and want to be buried in the Mormon cemetery in Tucson. I have a funeral playlist that I want to share with all my funeral guests. Or if you want it now I'll send you the link. If I died now, people would be really sad, and feel survivors guilt and question God and whatever else comes with losing a young person. I don't want to do that to anybody. But if I'm 95 years old other people won't be too upset, they'll be a little sad I'm sure, but it'll be easier for them. I feel ...

 I just dropped some cruise ship passengers off at a nature tour in Ketchikan, Alaska, and was heading down a narrow dirt road in my bus. In the road I saw a Book of Mormon, laying in the mud, all bent out of shape and ripped up a little. I recognized it the moment I saw it (it's easy to recognize, the book is blue the church is true) and my first instinct was to just drive on, but my second instinct was to stop and pick it up. I stopped, put on my hazards and ran back for the Book of Mormon. When I got back to my bus, another bus was coming up the road, and thankfully where I was stopped was the only point in this narrow road where I was able to pull over and let my coworker drive more cruise ship passengers to the nature tour.  In the Mormon faith that instinct is called a "prompting of the spirit" like, it's God nudging you to do something. It's up to interpretation whether that prompting is your first instinct or your second instinct, or just like a nagging fe...

18 months ago I fell in love, and 1 year ago I had an incredible heartbreak. It was a chance meeting, he was very cute, and a fantastic person. The infatuation became a foundation in my life, much of my life was shaped around it. I spent all my time daydreaming about our future together. I was almost shocked at my willingness to drop everything else in my life to commit to a romance.  It's pretty wild how much risk I was willing to take. But I'm proud of myself for taking that risk. The love was unstable of course, I have way too much internalized homophobia, I lived in my car (not enough room for 2 people sorry) and two imperfect humans are gonna be a little unstable no matter how you cut it.  Love was motivating, I had goals and dreams and wanted to be a better person. Love was fun and beautiful. Heartbreak kinda stunted that. For a long time my passive thoughts were wondering what I did wrong, wondering if he thought about me at all, and I became cynical and jaded about lov...