DiaBLOGue

A Sunday School Answer

Just another day in paradise in the Garden Park Ward. It was a spring morning that felt more like summer, and Sister Conway, our Sunday school instructor, was gracious enough to leave the door open,…

Rook

Last winter, after half a century of faithful church service and during a temple session, I abandoned my position at the temple veil, removed my robes, and demanded to be released. By nightfall, I had…

My Father Comes to Me

My father comes to me 
his hand scrapes on the door 
that he opens to this bedroom where I am still, 
not sleeping but waiting for his hair oil scent to reach me.

Joseph Smith’s Interpretation of Isaiah in the Book of Mormon

Dialogue 31.4 (Winter 1999):190–199
It is noteworthy be￾cause, instead of laying out the original historical meaning of Isaiah, it re￾applies the text to the time of Joseph Smith and to the course of Jewish and Christian history up to his time.

Drama Queen

The week they turn off your phone, 
I wait in your car while you give quarters 
to a pay phone mounted on red brick 
at a convenience store. 

Profile of Apostasy: Who Are the Bad Guys, Really?

What a difference a word makes. Consider, for example, these two words: apostle, a biblical word from the Greek apostalds, meaning “one sent forth.” For Mormons, an apostle is a man called of God as…

Determinist Mansions in the Mormon House?

The human mind seems irresistibly compelled by (at least) two incompatible intuitions: first, that as morally responsible beings we are able to do other than what we do; second, that what happens now could not…

Night Fires

Family sentinels, we watch flames grab scrub oak
roughly on the shoulder of our dysphoric mountain,
shiver as three firs’ tired arms collapse in slow motion
silence.