Word: mormon
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...office of Gordon Hinckley, the president of the Mormon church, leads through long carpeted corridors with wood-paneled walls and security doors that swing open noiselessly with no visible movement from the guards. It is like walking into a David Lynch movie. In these hushed precincts, groups of gray-haired men in identical black suits pass by, beaming smiles like undertakers. Everyone is scrupulously polite, but as a visitor, one feels that one has been dropped into the middle of a plot, without knowing the beginning...
...Hinckley, Mormons believe, is in direct contact with God and so presumably is party to the whole plot. Thus the faithful paid close attention last July when the head of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints stood up to make his annual speech for Pioneer Day. But instead of a soothing homage to Mormon virtues and achievements in the 154 years since the pioneers settled Utah, Hinckley, 91, gave the world's 11 million Mormons a lecture on being good neighbors...
...After pointing out that Utah's population had now acquired "great diversity," Hinckley admonished the Mormon majority for being clannish and adopting holier-than-thou attitudes. The speech has become a watershed in Utah, a focus of debate over the church's future. Hinckley, whose smiling bonhomie floats over such controversy, told Time in an interview in his office, "I am an open individual. I think we all ought to be that way-but it is all a process; it doesn't happen in a day." Since becoming president in 1995, the media-savvy Hinckley has been trying to gently...
...preserving the link between vigor and virtue, muscles and morality, Mormon culture more perfectly embodies the old Olympic spirit than the Games do. Unfortunately, this achievement was compromised by the way in which Salt Lake City won the Games. By pursuing victory at all cost, the local boosters sullied their high standards in much the same way that steroid-popping athletes do. Purity was sacrificed to pragmatism. The Salt Lake City Olympic committee pulled a sort of financial Tanya Harding, hoping to rig the results in the arena by pulling shameful shenanigans in the alley. The Olympic flame may symbolize...
...archaic teaching nowadays, and as kid who liked to share a beer with schoolmates who weren't bound by Mormon doctrine, I found it hard to follow. Still, it was something to shoot for, and by trying I probably moved an inch closer to future godhood than I would have had it not existed. Hey, a lot of Olympians fall short too. It's the attempt that matters, though. The struggle. One hopes that this struggle hasn't been abandoned yet - that deep inside all of our temples, that light still shines...