Anna Jones Buttimore

I've just woken up to the news about the explosions at the finish line of the Boston marathon. Whatever I was going to blog about today is forgotten, because, to be honest, when this sort of senselessly horrendous thing happens everything else seems really trivial and petty. So I'm stuck with having to write a blog about this traumatic atrocity but for all my writing credentials really having no words to make it better. That's because there are no words to make it better. There are no platitudes or soundbytes which can make any sense of this terrible tragedy, or explain away the evil which is evident in events like this. However, one of the marathon participants who was there inadvertently gave what I think constitutes the best advice to those of us reeling over the shock of this event. She told of how she had come to the finish line to find it full of carnage and horror, and race officials told her to "Just keep running". Imagine it for a moment. You have traine...

This weekend was a pretty historic one for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Following polite "protests" and appeals to the church leadership, a woman has given a  prayer in a session of General Conference for the first time. (Two women, in fact, in two separate sessions.) I missed this momentous occasion on account of being on a transatlantic flight, and then comatose, for much of proceedings, but I shall endeavour to catch up with the entire conference, including the prayers, via the internet once I am awake again. There may be those somewhere out there who imagine that allowing a woman to take part in proceedings in this way was some kind of tremendous climb-down or back-pedalling on the part of the church hierarchy. Not so much, however. A statement made by a President of the Church (too lazy to find the exact reference right now) decades ago explained that there was no reason a woman shouldn't offer a prayer at any church me...