Friday Links: Suicide, Gratitude, Women in the LDS Faith (Friday Favorites)

On Suicide (just in case you're still reading up on the topic):

A perspective on Suicide

Suicide and Agency

Suicide:  Some Things We Know, and Some We Do Not

On First World Problems and Materialism:

Give Me Gratitude or Give Me Debt

For my fellow LDS friends (and those not of our faith but are curious):

This is a Women's Church by Sharon Eubank, the Director of LDS Charities.

Loved this:

And as I studied that scripture, I started asking myself, what would it be like if there were no whoredoms? What would that society be like? So here’s my list:

• Teenage couples don’t get pregnant and have to get married to the wrong person.

• Lives don’t get warped and stalled by sexual abuse.

• There is no fear of rape or violence.

• There is great security on the streets, there’s no serial killers, there’s no kidnappings.

• There is no market for prostitutes.

• There is no sex trade or there is no sexual slavery.

• Spouses don’t have affairs or commit adultery.

• Marriages stay intact and children aren’t raised in the insecurity and divided loyalty of divorce.

• Cities don’t have seedy, creepy neighborhoods that are filled with adult theaters and deviant bookstores.

• There is no appetite for pornography – it doesn’t degrade the people who make it or who watch it. It doesn’t warp the sexual development of young people and rot the relationship between a husband and a wife.

• There are no children being raised by a generation of women and painfully wondering where there fathers are.

• All of the energy and the money that goes into all of those activities above the above, is available for something else.

How is that not more free and not more desirable for women, for men, for children, how is that not?

& This:

The second question is, has the church sent any aid to the Christians in Iraq?
This is why I had to leave that meeting yesterday. The church authorized an emergency funding, $100,000, to just buy oil, beans, rice, and bedding. I got a picture last night of a woman, she is probably seventy years old. And she is lying on the street on some kind of a foam pad with a pillow and she has her slippers, she has a tin cup, she has a bottle of water, and she has a flashlight. And she is not able to stand up. And she is just lying between a window, a wall, and the street where the traffic is going by. And I think that is the condition all over the city. So it’s not the amount of money. It’s finding people who can deliver the aid. And so we will continue to do that. We authorized the $100,000. We will continue to authorize that money as fast as they are able to distribute. And yesterday’s money will go up to that vicar who has five thousand people in his church yard and is looking every day to say, “How do I feed these five thousand people?”
And we will continue to do that. We are also doing the same thing in Gaza. But it is very hard to spend money in the right kind of way that it actually helps the people with a good transparent partner. Thanks for the question about that.

And Just for Fun:

Back to School:  1970s versus Today

And a completely unrelated photo just so this post isn't completely picture-less: