Parched
March 29, 2018Measured teaspoons of salt.
Sifted flour, dustbowl flour.
It gulps and swallows water.
I feel it splinter off my hands,
DiaBLOGue
The Truth, the Partial Truth, Something Like the Truth, So Help Me God
March 29, 2018In October of 1993 Dallin H. Oaks, an apostle for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and Steve Benson, editorial cartoonist for the Arizona Republic and eldest grandson of former LDS president Ezra Taft Benson, had an argument in a public place. Their dispute centered on the role played by Apostle Boyd K. Packer in the September excommunication of Paul James Toscano. According to both men, this had been a subject of discussion between them during two “confidential” meetings.
In Riverdale
March 29, 2018We returned to our beginnings
in August, with its crayola green
trees and grass, blue sky,
and yellow light so certainly imposed
Philosophical Christian Apology Meets “Rational” Mormon Theology
March 29, 2018As Joseph Smith matured in his prophetic calling, he came to regard what he saw as the rational appeal of his developing theology as one of its chief virtues. Throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, this attitude continued to animate authoritative interpretations and defenses of Mormon doctrine offered by leading Mormon churchmen and intellectuals.
In a Pueblo Indian Dwelling, Four-Corners
March 29, 2018 Beside
shards of earthen jars and bowls,
the Kachina-Child returns
in the desert’s smoldering gaze. He enters
On “Defense of Marriage” A Reply to Quinn
March 29, 2018D. Michael Quinn, a scholar for whom I have immense respect, has written what he calls a “prelude” to the national campaign in “defense of marriage” with reference particularly to the efforts of the LDS…
Prelude to the National “”Defense of Marriage”” Campaign: Civil Discrimination Against Feared or Despised Minorities
March 29, 2018America is currently in the midst of state-by-state political activism and judicial appeals to prevent the legalization of same-sex marriage. In 1996 the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated one example of the related effort to roll back laws protecting homosexuals from civil discrimination, but this campaign moves forward on various fronts in every state of the Union. Its organizers will certainly extend this political activism into all states currently lacking a “Defense of Marriage Act” (DOMA) which both prohibits same-sex marriage and refuses to recognize such unions legally performed in other states or countries. In view of the pace for this state by-state political activism during the 1990s, the Defense of Marriage campaign will probably continue throughout the United States for at least another decade.
Anhedonia
March 29, 2018He said, “She said it means
Unable to have pleasure,
Unable to find it anywhere.
She put me on Zoloft to help.”
Learning to Disappear
March 28, 2018They say there is a Buddha
In each grain of sand
We begin huge and rigid. Life grinds
away at us. We grind against one another.
Another Perspective | David Trobish, Mormonen—die Heiligen der letzten Zeit? [Mormons—Saints of the Latter Times?]
March 28, 2018When one reviews a book on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in a language other than English—regardless of the content of the book—the question of the significance of non-English books about Mor…