When I was ordained an elder a couple of months ago, my congregation gave me the gift of a full set of the 1976 History of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I genuinely love this gift and am excited to one day make my way through all eight volumes! Yet, it’s also gotten me thinking a lot about what I want my service in this denomination—now, of course, named Community of Christ—to look like. In many ways, it’s the history of this church that drew me to it when my faith began to crumble: If it weren’t for its shared history with the church I grew up in, Community of Christ may not be as interesting to me as it is. Yet, I’ve also quipped to friends that while I’m glad to have joined Community of Christ, I don’t know that I ever would have joined the RLDS church (at least, not in the form that it took in 1976). I’ve also written repeatedly on this blog about my feelings about the relative importance of the Independence Temple compared to the Kirtland Temple for this denomination in the years to come: One is an anchor to our past, but the other points to our future.

This summer, I attended a Community of Christ “Reunion” camp for the third time. All three times have been at a campground in Southern Indiana owned by my local “mission center” (a regional grouping of congregations, not dissimilar to an LDS stake or a Catholic dioceses). I’ve wanted to write this post since getting back from Reunion in mid-June, and it probably would have been a better post if I had written it right away. That said, we’ve been doing a lot of family travel since then, and I’ve been trying to process exactly what I want to write about Reunion, so it’s only happening now.

As I blogged elsewhere a couple of days ago, I’ve recently purchased the most recent (and maybe last?) album from the folk rock Québécois band Les cowboys fringants, whose music I’ve been listening to since 2011. Their lead singer, Karl Tremblay, passed away far too young from cancer last November, which made this album a bit of a surprise, but Tremblay had managed to contribute to some of the songs before his death, and the rest of the band managed to put the rest of the album together in their grief.

On the way home from work today, I listened to the latest episode of the Salt Lake Tribune’s Mormon Land podcast, recapping the recent LDS General Conference. The two guests—Emily Jensen and Patrick Mason—were both great, and even though I have no interest in watching General Conferences myself, I’m really grateful for the Tribune’s coverage.

Patrick Mason made a comment about possible Latter-day Saint temple theologies that struck me as interesting in the context of what I’ve been writing recently about Community of Christ Independence Temple theology, and I wanted to capture it here. Here’s how it’s rendered in the transcript (which is a neat benefit from supporting the Tribune’s religion coverage on Patreon):

This past week, in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the opening of RLDS (now Community of Christ) priesthood to women, the Community of Christ YouTube channel posted a video that was originally recorded back in 1984, during and after that year’s World Conference. From the very first second, it is very clearly a product of the 1980s, and I love it for that. Here’s a link, but I have more to write afterwards on a specific part of the video:

I have spent far too much time blogging this week (even before the sale of the Kirtland Temple was announced), but weeks like this don’t come often, and I feel like holding onto this week’s thoughts will be important in the years to come. So, here’s another post!

A friend recently suggested that I subscribe to the daily meditations sent out by Richard Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation, and today’s was lovely, focusing on finding God in all things. Here’s the passage that stood out to me in particular (and perhaps you’ll see why):