A Saturday’s Journey to Gilgal

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Category : Ancient, Ceremony/Ordinances, Images, Joseph Smith, Old Testament, Sacred Places

img_0716 Just over a 2 weeks ago, we visited a site in downtown Salt Lake that I’ve been wanting to see ever since I first stumbled across some information on it, on the internet.

Its called the Gilgal Garden, and is located at 749 E 500 S, Salt Lake City, UT. The gardens were built by Thomas Child, who worked on it throughout his life. He named the place after the location where Joshua had the Israelites take 12 stones and place them together as part of a covenant and memorial, after crossing the Jordan river on dry land. Bro. Child was sculptor and put his own interpretations of scriptures, into stone. The piece for which he named the garden, features 12 stones in a circle, with an etching of “The Captain of the Lord’s Host” standing at the head. Because it was basically his backyard, the garden is somewhat secluded and hidden. You can read more about the garden at Wikipedia, or I have uploaded a scan of the walk-through self-tour guide.

Old Testament Video Resources

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Category : Images, Media & Internet, Misc, Old Testament, Video

Some of you probably know because you know me, or have noticed by my video and other media posts: I am kinda an amateur dabbler in video production and film making.

So I was excited when I noticed that the church announced a new DVD set as a resource for teaching Old Testament in the upcoming year. There are 56 videos in the set, many of which are new, or have never been available for purchase previously. There are also many, many other visual resources. From the preview video, they look like great quality reenactments of Old Testament stories. The reenactments either include, or other resources have, life-like renderings of the Tabernacle, Temple at Jerusalem and other stuff that can seem very distant until you see video that looks very real, as if peaking into the past. I’m excited to see all this new stuff, and see if it aides teachers in real Sunday School teaching situations.

You can watch the preview video they made here:

Get the Flash Player to see the wordTube Media Player.

If you’re interested in how technology like this can help advance the purposes of the church, Bryce Haymond at TempleStudy.com posted, and started a Google Wave, about about using Google Wave to advance the purposes of the church.

Iconography – Powerful Political Symbolism

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Category : Iconography, Images, Media & Internet, Politics, Pop-culture, Video

OptumismNancy, who comments here, pointed out to me a very interesting and well-made video about iconography in politics today. It explores powerful iconography in use in American politics today. It a great video about symbolism used in the propaganda of our time. “Iconography” in particular, is essentially the same type of symbolism I employ in the design of this blog: using pictorial symbols or icons to convey meaning.

In fact its the same kind that we use a lot in computers and the internet, but its just so common, we don’t think about it much. For example, the little orange icon under the “Sacred Symbolic” title–at the top of this blog–with the white circle and a couple curved lines that appear to radiate out from it, mean “you can click here to subscribe or follow our RSS or Atom Feed” to anyone who uses Feeds. These “Feeds” are ways that websites update other sites and anyone who wants to subscribe by feed reader such as Google Reader, of any news posts or other changes that have been made to them. If you use facebook or Twitter but are not familiar with feeds or feed readers, its kinda like following another person on those sites, but instead you’re following the blog or website through your feed reader.

New World DNA

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Category : Book of Mormon, Images, Media & Internet, Misc, Scriptures, Video

Tevya at Monte Alban

Tevya at Monte Alban

This last weekend I was at my parents home. I ended up not feeling well for a day or so. I looked around for stuff to watch (they don’t have regular TV and I forgot my laptop’s power cord) and happened across the documentary Journey of Faith: The New World. Having spent five weeks traveling through Mesoamerica studying the peoples and history there, it was my first pick. I’d already watched the original Journey of Faith and was very impressed by it.

Wallpapers & Updates

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Category : Images, Misc, wallpaper

I liked the graphic that I found for the last post so much that I created a wallpaper out of it. I decided to share it here, and may make more scriptural & symbolism themed wallpapers. I like gospel themed wallpapers and often have pictures of temples on my desktop. They help to remind me of where my heart and focus should be. So visit our images page to download and set the new wallpaper as your desktop background. Or here’s the widescreen version:

"Armor of God" wallpaper - widescreen

"Armor of God" wallpaper - widescreen

Also, look for the concluding articles of our two previous series in the near future. I intend to do part three of “The Most Important Chapters in Scripture” and part two of “Church as an Aaronic Priesthood Temple” very soon. I also have several updates for the About page in store. So check back soon!

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