DiaBLOGue

A nighttime hour came when I drove out and found a haven in the late year weather.
The rest of the world boozed and fought and laughed but mostly slept, and the year kept its schedule dreaming, and I stopped on a quiet hill

They said that shape held meaning,
the men in starched shirts: some symbol of eternity
or devotion. The spiral. I don’t mind
those messages, but they don’t fit a religion so linear

The call to go back. After days preaching, raising his voice to a people
become for themselves. A people who mocked his warnings (fools
mock), saw him as filthy and loathsome. Mistaking cankering riches
for rightness, whiteness for delightsome; heritage for righteousness;
ignoring

to be moved out of, finished.
Grief is like lichen on the north side of trees
in forests of your childhood, subtle
with color, some very drab.

On June 30, 1860, Samuel Wilberforce, a fiery Anglican bishop, addressed the British Science Association at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History on the subject of Darwin’s recent publication, On the Origin of Species…

In 1984, sociologist of religion Rodney Stark predicted there could be 267 million Mormons in the world by 2080, after extrapolating the 1982–1983 Latter-day Saints (LDS) growth rates into the far future. “His optimistic projections have so warmed the hearts of the faithful that they are often quoted over the pulpit, even in general conference now and then,” Armand Mauss dryly noted.

They told us she’d be dead by morning. Just like that, “dead by morning,” as if they were speaking about mail delivery or some such. To them, she wasn’t yet emergent. She was just another…

I have spent much time contemplating my journey as a mother, a religious educator, and an aspiring historian. There are moments where I have felt pride and hope, while also moments of discouragement and sorrow.…

Overnight, snow has deepened;
there’s this sense of it mending anything broken—
the slight roof-sag on a garden shed next door,
a riven support wall under back fence,
and something more. . . .