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Jack-Mormons

Aunt Ella used to say that a man who doesn’t live his principles is a poor specimen. This observation, like her other nuggets of conventional wisdom, was ostensibly directed at me, but she always cast…

Lesser Voices

Sun-circled history 
Paints famous fools 
But leaves plain brown men 
Unremarked 

The Weed

This morning I went to the funeral of a friend who was killed in a motorcycle accident. I slipped into the only vacant pew in the very back of the chapel and listened to the…

If I Were Satan

If I were Satan, I’d keep a scrapbook, a book of remembrance, if you will, of the hidden face of evil. It would contain such eternal verities as this by English philosopher and mathematician William…

If I Were God

I often muse what I would do if I were God: Would I first stop wars, eliminate hunger and disease, make people loving and caring? I think not. Though the prospect is appealing, I know…

Pilgrims in Time

Four carved bishops keep vigil above the threshold to Canterbury Cathedral. The filigree of sculpture surrounding them is as airy as lace, though crafted of stone. It looks as if it could rise upon wind…

“Cast Me Not Off in the Time of Old Age”

Growing old in the last part of the twentieth century is unlike anything that has gone before. The population of older people in the United States has increased dramatically, rising from 18 million in 1965 to more than 29 million in 1987 (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1988, 15). By the year 2020, those over sixty-five will comprise 20 percent of the population (Holden 1987, 272). Those over eighty make up the fastest growing group, and the number of 100-year-olds will triple by the turn of the century (Maxwell 1987, 710). 

Snowfall at Glenflesk

The hush that sheathes the road is sure and slow. 
My lights suspend a galaxy of flakes: 
The silence is as haunted as the snow. 

“A Song for One Still Voice”: Hymn of Affirmation

Christian doctrine, from Paul’s injunction, “Mortify the deeds of the body” (Rom. 8:13), to King Benjamin’s declarative, “The natural man is an enemy to God” (Mosiah 3:19), teaches the death of the natural man, the…

The Mormon Conference Talk as Patriarchal Discourse

Everything means something. When I write a list of food names on a long, narrow sheet of paper, not only the words themselves but the form in which they are written indicate this is a…