Soul food

[Here's this week's BASOTRUSSL!  If you don't know what that is, check out the beginning of this post.]

Have you ever considered that the prophet-historians who kept the records that became the Book of Mormon were basically bloggers, more or less? They were chronicling the important events of their lives, adding their commentary, often getting very personal, but hoping their work would be read and shared by as wide an audience as possible.

The reading assignment for this week's Sunday School lesson inlcudes what is known as "the psalm of Nephi," which Nephi begins by saying "upon these [plates] I write the things of my soul" (2 Ne. 4:15). I'm a very different "blogger" than Nephi, either in style or substance--I either don't spend much time on the things of my soul, or I really don't have much of a soul to share. The jury's still out on that one.

Here's what I do have to share this week after reading the assigned chapters: first of all, the one word that stood out to me above all others is "loins." It's used over and over in 2 Nephi 3. It's kind of a funny word. Here's a sort of funny stand-up bit about the scriptural use of loins.

Chapter 3 also refers extensively to Joseph, of Old Testament fame, the one who was sold into Egypt. Whenever he is mentioned, I invariably think of the Technicolor Dreamcoat musical, my second-favorite musical of all time (behind only Little Shop of Horrors, just ahead of Newsies). I had never seen it until a few months before returning from my mission. In my last area, an old lady named Sister Rattray had us over for breakfast every Saturday morning. For some reason, she never stayed in the room to talk to us, but she would've been devastated if we stopped coming. So we watched Dreamcoat almost every week, and I fell in love. I had the entire show memorized by the time I returned to the States. I also had developed a crush on the narrator, Maria Friedman.



Adorable, right? I know she's 20 years older than me, but I don't care. It looks like that particular uploader has the entire production on YouTube, with a separate video for each song. If you haven't seen it before (or just haven't watched it in years), you should give it a try. Here's another fun one, which had the added bonus of beginning with the new T-Mobile ad featuring Kirby Heyborne as Cupid. I suppose it might play a different ad when you play it, so in case you don't see it, know that Mr. RM himself had nothing on but--you guessed it--a sheet girded about his "loins."

Since I would like to blog more like Nephi, I'll end with a serious one. Prophecies about Joseph Smith also abound in 2 Nephi 3. There's a great subsection of lds.org devoted to the Prophet, starting with his foreordination to restore the church and also covering his teachings, his character, his trials, his family, and much more. Check it out.