On 15 June 1844 Joseph Smith recorded in his journal that “[the steam boat] Maid of Iowa come [sic] down the river about 2 or 3 o’clock While I was examining Benj[amin] Wests painting of…
The portion of 1 John 5:7-8 highlighted in bold has long given biblical scholars pause for thought. Not just modern, “secular,” or “liberal” scholars, either. A physics professor of mine once told his students that Sir Isaac Newton, whose formulation of the laws of gravity still form the fundamentals of physics, actually wrote four times as many books on theology as he did on science.
Any discussion of Mormon culture or doctrine in the work of nationally prominent American poet May Swenson must begin with the caveat that Swenson, for virtually all of her adult life, was not a believing…
He blisters his hand on the iron she forgot to unplug,
investigates every outlet, detects exactly three more
potential fire hazards, bandages himself
in the prescribed method. She is not a cautious woman.
Let me begin with two statements from a man who 350 years ago struggled to live a life of faith. An eminent mathematician, Blaise Pascal was also a philosopher and religious thinker who knew both the value of rigorous analysis and the limitations of reason. The first quotation, from his Pensees, is his famous theistic wager:
In April 1995, just before I left for a month-long trip to Slovenia, I had a brief telephone conversation with Linda King Newell. I had been invited to speak at the annual Pilgrimage Retreat. She…
In 1975 psychiatrist Raymond A. Moody introduced the expression “near-death experience” (NDE) in his bestselling book Life After Life. By 1988 more than 3 million copies of the book had been sold (not including foreign…
Ahumming stillness. In the orchards up and down the valley
the pith of summer turns slowly to juices. Ripeness:
what my grandmother knows, hunched in her silence.
Long after my father’s kindeys failed, I keep in a willow box under my bed the two letters he wrote to me in the thirty years since I left home. Mother did practically all the…
Pluck them out one by one
Melancholy, dearth, unableness
Squeeze out the poisons
Scratch away the sting