The Lord’s Table
April 15, 2018The banquet table was spread,
But I could no longer smell
Satisfaction in the room.
DiaBLOGue
Two Fishermen in Hong Kong
April 15, 2018We couldn’t find anyone
in that inner-city maze.
Between thick buildings
Grandma’s Dying
April 15, 2018My ex-grandmother-in-law is dying upstairs. Her being with me was my ex-husband’s idea. He said I could have the house if she stayed in it. I reminded him that Gran hated me. He said, “She…
Sunset Ward
April 15, 2018I spent many hours in the Sunset Ward chapel in San Francisco when I was growing up. It was a handsome building, unlike any other ever built in the Church. Firmly planted on a hillside…
Life in Zion after Conversion: Hazed or Hailed?: A Mormon Out of Misunderstanding
April 15, 2018More than twenty years ago I was baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I can’t speak for the Church, but I suspect it is safe to say that neither…
Life in Zion after Conversion: Hazed or Hailed?: Beached on the Wasatch Front: Probing the Us and Them Paradigm
April 15, 2018In a chapter from her autobiography, Blackberry Winter, Margaret Mead describes the rejection she experienced during her freshman year at DePauw, a small midwestern college. Students had come to DePauw, in Mead’s words, “for fraternity…
Life in Zion after Conversion: Hazed or Hailed?: Toward a More Mature View
April 15, 2018When we immigrated to Utah in 1967, Elder Mark E. Peterson said to my husband, “I hope you won’t be like so many converts who come to Zion. They think we should be perfect, and…
Fawn Brodie and Her Quest for Independence
April 15, 2018Fawn McKay Brodie is known in Mormon circles primarily for her controversial 1945 biography of Joseph Smith—No Man Knows My History. Because of this work she was excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of…
Three Poems for My Mother
April 15, 2018For Your Birthday: Planting in the Rain
Fall Canker
A Place for Roses
Explorations in Mormon Social Character Beyond the Liahona and Iron Rod
April 15, 2018Richard Poll, hands clasped, leaned forward and strained to clarify, with labored sensitivity, two kinds of ideal-typical Mormons, the Iron Rod member and the Liahona Saint, whose characteristics he had recently detailed in a controversial…