Something to Show
April 4, 2018The corridors buzzed with all the chatter and anticipation of a courtroom before a major trial. At five after eleven, packs of people scurried to their seats looking greedily toward the stand. The chapel bulged.…
DiaBLOGue
Sanctified, In the Flesh
April 4, 2018He disengaged the gear, ground the key forward. The motor clicked. The steerage went heavy in his hands. He pushed the signal bar upward with his palm, crossed lanes. “What is it?” she asked. “Nothing,”…
Of Prophets and Pale Horses: Joseph Smith, Benjamin West, and the American Millenarian Tradition
April 4, 2018On 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 Johannine Comma: Bad Translation, Bad Theology
April 4, 2018The 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.
“I Do Remember How It Smelled Heavenly”: Mormon Aspects of May Swenson’s Poetry
April 4, 2018Any 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…
By Extension
April 4, 2018He 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.
“To Act and Be Acted Upon”
April 4, 2018Let 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:
The Precarious Walk Away from Mormonism, All the Time With a Stitch in My Side
April 4, 2018In 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…
Embraced by the Church? Betty Eadie, Near-Death Experiences, and Mormonism
April 4, 2018In 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…
August
April 4, 2018Ahumming 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.