Transformation
April 13, 2018I had wanted your wife
to be born to the graces,
elegantly muted
in dove-gray and gloves,
to take tea from fine china,
walk perfumed in silk.
DiaBLOGue
“A Profound Sense of Community”: Mormon Values in Wallace Stegner’s Recapitulation
April 13, 2018In his carefully crafted and distinguished novel Recapitulation (1979), Wallace Stegner, Iowa-born, Saskatchewan-reared, but Utah-formed, joins his protagonist Bruce Mason on a brief visit to Salt Lake City some forty-five years after leaving home. The seventy-ish Mason, now a successful lawyer, distinguished internationalist and former ambassador, returns to the city of his youth and young manhood to arrange for the burial of his Aunt Margaret. To his surprise, his Gentile return to Zion releases—through an outpouring of nostalgia, memories, dreams and fantasies—the ghosts of unresolved conflicts which have haunted him, consciously and subconsciously, from those early years.
A Call Before the Obituary
April 13, 2018His name, distant to me,
opened your mouth to blackness.
It seemed you laughed before
the half-crow caw fell out.
The Temple in Zion: A Reorganized Perspective on a Latter Day Saint Institution
April 13, 2018Dialogue 24.1 (Spring 1991): 86–98
In preparation for the Independence Temple that was dedicated in 1994, an RLDS member shares ideas about temples in general.
Island Spring
April 13, 2018Always she is there on that far island
in my mind, where it is always night,
and the moon tears into a world of leaves,
and is torn. A child, she steps
The Development of the Mormon Concept of Grace
April 13, 2018Latter-day Saints may be surprised to discover that Joseph Smith did not reject the importance of grace. Indeed, he developed a profound and novel view resolving many problems presented by the grace freedom dichotomy in…
Innocence
April 13, 2018I confess I have invented a word
for the thing I am and the thing I have done.
It is a pleasant word and may be spoken
to young children or written in their books.
“All Alone and None to Cheer Me”: The Soughern States Mission Diary of J. Golden Kimball
April 13, 2018If you had been a guest in Chattanooga’s Florentine Hotel on the evening of 14 April 1883, your sleep might have been disturbed, particularly if your room were near one of those occupied by the…
Speaking in Tongues in the Restoration Churches
April 13, 2018Dialogue 24.1 (Spring 1991): 13–35
However, during the mid-1800s, speaking in tongues was so commonplace in the LDS and RLDS churches that a person who had not spoken in tongues, or who had not heard others do so, was a rarity.
The Paradox of Paradox | Margaret Toscano and Paul Toscano, Strangers in Paradox: Explorations in Mormon Theology
April 13, 2018Recently I was asked to review Margaret and Paul Toscano’s Strangers in Paradox for a local newspaper. While I tried in that review to be as honest and true as I know how, I realize…