From the teachings of its founder, Joseph Smith, down to the present time, Mormon doctrine has recognized two complementary, though sometimes competing, sources of authority in personal affairs. Through one source, the priesthood hierarchy, Latter-day…
A few Saturdays ago, I stood in the duplication center at the University of Utah, photocopying a book-length manuscript with the cover title: “A Manuscript, by B. H. Roberts.” Halfway through the project, a dark-haired…
I was born in the Church and have always been active in it—more or less. My conviction in the validity of its claims has vacillated over the years. Until recently there always had been in…
“Whoa.” Benjamin Vaughn pulled back on the lines and stopped his four horse team. It was midmorning and he had just finished cutting his ten-acre patch of barley. With the binder stopped, Ben grasped the…
Let the stone whisper to the flower,
The flower to the sun,
And the sun to the stars of heaven,
That Jehovah is come for his bride;
Take, eat; this is my body.
Like a deer he came to me,
Parting the ferns,
Like a deer with bright antlers.
I chased him across meadows,
The church of my childhood
was redbrick, too.
Smug and warm inside, I’d
watch the snow battling the windows
The sensibility described by Amy Lowell—that there is something odd about women who write serious poetry—is still given substance today by the endangered state of the species. Even I will not waste time counting the few woman poets anthologized before Lowell’s time; contemporary statistics suffice.
President Spencer W. Kimball, in his address to the Samoa area conference in 1976, pointed out that he is frequently asked at press conferences about what he thinks is the single “greatest” problem facing the…
Some of Mormonism’s most important ideas appear to lie at the point of a paradox. The president of the Church, for example, is considered to be the divinely appointed mouthpiece of God, a prophet who…