Orisons
March 21, 2018Raw-tipped branches
freeze and unflutter.
Chafed knuckles wince
to bud wadeable leaves,
homesick mulch.
DiaBLOGue
Mouths
March 21, 2018We’ve left your mother to sleep alone,
no mouth or hand at breast,
free to dream and sleep alone
Summer Dam
March 21, 2018After spring snowmelt from Ephraim Canyon
where Grandpa ran his eighty head in summer,
the creek slowed and eased its crippled way
down over gravel and stones,
Heloise and Abelard
March 21, 2018“We’ll get there by ten.” Nod and look behind, dance a quickstep ahead of the noise of a thousand feet on the wet pavement of Liege. Feels strange to be thrown into a world you’re…
The Siege of Troy
March 21, 2018Do not expect, Hera, to know all my thoughts, even though you are my wife. What I find fitting to reveal, no god or man will know before you. But beware of finding out what…
About the Artists
March 21, 2018Valerie Atkisson, Notation in Time
Kent Christensen, Salt Water Jetty
Jon Moe, Manhattan New York Temple
Kah Leong Poon, Christmas in Central Park
Mormon Artists Group: Adventures in Art Making
March 21, 2018It is an elaborate experiment really, this Mormon Artists Group that I founded in 1999, seven years ago. In my interviews with the press, I have been saying that the number of LDS writers, painters,…
“Lord, To Whom Shall We Go?” The Challenges of Discipleship and Church Membership
March 21, 2018Over the course of a lifetime, I have had occasion to give thought to the question of why I continue to be an active, committed member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It seems to have become more important during periods when official actions of the Church clashed with my expectations of how the Church should respond (for example, during the Civil Rights movement—especially around issues of denial of the priesthood to blacks; during the battle over the Equal Rights Amendment; during the Vietnam war; and for the past several decades over the Church’s treatment of homosexuals). The question of staying has also been raised at times when I have experienced deep pain because of the treatment by ecclesiastical leaders toward me and those I love.
Personal Reflections on the Founding of Dialogue
March 21, 2018The idea of starting a Mormon publication had certainly occurred to many before the appearance of Dialogue. It first surfaced in my mind in the 1950s. Richard O. Cowan was doing graduate work in history…
A Forty-Year View: Dialogue and the Sober Lessons of History
March 21, 2018I well remember the spring and summer of 1965 when Gene England, Wesley Johnson, Paul Salisbury, Joseph Jeppson, and I got together to explore the idea of an unofficial Mormon publication. There were lively conversations culminating in a meeting at the Johnson home on July 11, where we voted to incorporate as a non-profit under the laws of Utah. The History Department at Stanford allowed us to use a portion of Wes’s office as our base—no rent, no utilities to pay. Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought was the result. A lot has been written about that early history. However, there are a couple of things I see now that I didn’t clearly grasp then. First, I, for one, was a thoroughly pre-correlation Mormon. Second, the Church is not immune from the sober lessons of history.