On Monday my mom gave away the foxglove, much to Lydia’s joy.
In the evening I drove to Lehi to meet up with my friend, Michaelann Bradley. She is going through a lot of things, and we have mostly been online friends for the past several years. But with all of her transitions and mine, we decided to meet up and talk. I loved spending time with her and learned SO much.
Michaelann is the president of the Mormon Transhumanist Association. Transhumanists believe that technology develops at exponential rates and that at some point we will change from homo sapiens to homo deus–human gods–because of our technology. Mormon transhumanists try to impose an LDS ethic on transhumanism, which is interesting. It was also great to hear her take on Joseph Smith because she has been married to Don Bradley, the number on historical researcher in the Church. They believe Joseph Smith was a kind of alchemist who took very normal things and turned them into things legitimately more precious. For example, they believe he probably made the BOM plates himself but through either the occult, translation or something else created the Book of Mormon, which is legitimately precious scripture. This was very interesting for me to hear. I also just loved talking with her and getting to know her personal story. She is such a brilliant woman and I have admired her on FB for so long–it felt like a treat to have an in person conversation!
We talked until the restaurant was past closing time and agreed to keep in touch so we can get together again more frequently. When I left for dinner Abe said, “Make a friend!” –and I did! 🙂