Hymn
April 2, 2018Lately I can’t get over the feeling that there is a man in my bed: a big man with thick, wavy hair and a broad, barrel chest that goes up-and down, up-and-down all night long…
DiaBLOGue
Birthday Dreaming
April 2, 2018Sixty-four years ago my grandmother was shifting in her sleep, admiring her growing belly with gentle hands, welcoming the October nightfall that enclosed her like prayer. That’s how pregnancy is, ordinary things move on without…
One Nation Under Whose God? How Religion Was Excluded from the U.S. Political System
April 2, 2018Recently returning from ten years of foreign service in the Middle East, a friend mentioned that he was frequently asked how the United States successfully excludes religion from politics. My friend noted that to Middle…
“Watercress Grows Best in Running Water”
April 2, 2018Days after his death, I felt him
newly jovial alongside me. And weeks later,
when I again dreamed him young,
handing me a pail of watercress,
C. Thomas Asplund: Quiet Pilgrim
April 2, 2018I am not a historian. But my limited exposure to the discipline tells me that writing history involves arriving at definitions of “eras,” “cultures,” and “movements.” In my work in literary theory, I have been…
Renegotiating Scylla and Charybdis: Reading and the Distance between New York and Utah
April 2, 2018Readers unpacked Brian Evenson’s nationally-published collection of controversial short stories, Altmann’s Tongue, in diverse (perverse) ways. Jerry Johnston, a columnist for the Mormon church-owned Deseret News, observed, “The word ‘macabre’ comes to mind. He is…
Lily Foot
April 2, 2018Did I hold the tiny Chinese shoe
or simply gaze at it
encased in museum glass
in the old mining town
A Saint for All Seasons
April 2, 2018As Sterling McMurrin put it, “Every religion needs a saint, and Lowell Bennion is Mormonism’s saint.” Why does a church need a saint? People need a flesh and blood example, a person who has attained…
Templum: A Place Thought of as Holy
April 2, 2018I. The coming
Inside this precise granite
the immensity of the walk comes home
Max Weber and Lowell Bennion: Towards an Understanding of Hierarchy and Authority
April 2, 2018Lowell L. Bennion was widely known among Latter-day Saints for his Christlike life and humanitarianism, as well as for his teaching and authorship of numerous church books and manuals.