Back to the Temple, September 24, 2020

     Last Thursday, we (and especially Wendy) were overjoyed to get an invitation to attend the Provo temple.  Kimberly’s nephew, the son of her brother Travis, has a mission called to Houston Texas and was receiving his endowments.  In the new temple arrangements, a group of 16 can attend.  Travis and Bonnie and their family have just moved from Mt Home, ID to Price, where he is re-establishing his medical practice.  Their invited family consisted of three, plus Bonnie’s parents, plus Matthew and Kim and Alyssa and Jeremy.  Matthew and Kim were kind enough to make the arrangements with the Criddles for us to occupy a couple of the unused slots.  It had been 6 dry months since we last were in a temple and performed an endowment.  It was so nice.  Wendy was especially estatic.  It was just like going home.
    The minor adjustments in the ceremony to comply with social distancing were not a distraction.  Thanks to Kimberly and Matthew and the Criddle family for letting us have this experience.

Letter to the Editor #2

 Here is another unsent Letter to the Editor:

    This is a description of People of Praise, a small charismatic Catholic movement to which Amy Coney Barrett and her family belong:
    A tightknit religious group consisting of small lay-led groups or communities.  Member share a desire for a more intense, more experiential faith.  Adult members of the group take a covenant that includes a promise to follow the teachings and instructions of the group’s leaders and teachers, and make other specific promises to one another.  These are people who take their Christian faith and their intention to share life with others seriously.  Every person or family has their own spiritual leader who they can turn to for guidance in their lives, on family, finances and more.  There is a tremendous ethic of serving and caring for others, specially for persons in one’s own group. When someone who loses a job, or gets sick, group members are there.  Although one-to-one guidance is important, the group teaches individual prayer, as well.  Every person has personal freedom; you have to be responsible for your own decision and responsible to your conscience.  Members contribute a percentage of their gross income to the community.  In the teachings of this community there is an emphasis on the importance of traditional family and parental roles.
    I know of another people of praise type movement with many similar attributes, and more.  In 2019 in this movement there were 30,940 such groups world-wide.  They are called wards and branches.

Letter to the Editor #1

Here is a letter to the editor that I didn't send off:

    I would like to suggest that Black Lives Matter, black professional athletes, politicians, and others with influence on the black communities and especially black inner city cultures, add to their change agendas the following as a major priority: promote black marriage and increased involvement of black fathers in parenting, where the childbirth illegitimacy rate currently exceeds 70%.  Predictably, we should then begin to see, for young people in black communities and possibly over time for the entire community, significant reductions in youth behavioral problems, poor academic performance, truancy, youth crime and violence, promiscuity and teen pregnancy, drug and alcohol abuse, runaway and homelessness, sexual exploitation of girls, physical health problems, mental health disorders, unemployment and low income, problems in future adult relationships, short life spans, and tension with police and legal authorities.
    Persons who might want to explore the research on problems associated with fatherlessness, which incidently are largely independent of race, might study the following:

 Katy Faust and Stacy Manning June 12, 2020, "To Truly Reduce Racial Disparities, We Must Acknowledge Black Fathers Matter," https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/12/to-truly-reduce-racial-disparities-we-must-acknowledge-black-fathers-matter/

Edward Kruk, “Father Absence, Father Deficit, Father Hunger: The Vital Importance of Paternal Presence in Children’s Lives” Psychology Today, May 23, 2012.

David L. Gutmann, “The Paternal Imperative,”
http://americanvalues.org/catalog/pdfs/wp-47.pdf

Claudio Sanchez, “Poverty, Dropouts, Pregnancy, Suicide: What The Numbers Say About Fatherless Kids” citing the work of Alan Blankenstein
https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/06/18/533062607/poverty-dropouts-pregnancy-suicide-what-the-numbers-say-about-fatherless-kids

David Blankenhorn, “Fatherless America,” January 03, 1993, Center of the American Experiment.
https://www.americanexperiment.org/reports-books/fatherless-america/