Some with Shadows
March 21, 2018A day of long-walked silences,
waterless red gullies and hard-rock
plateaus. We’ve met few on the trails
this summer past my father’s dying.
DiaBLOGue
While Planting Hollyhocks
March 21, 2018In the dim green
I can’t tell what I’m remembering,
or what’s been handed down. . . .
Yorick
March 21, 2018A cold spell
for my desecration
slipped upward from your grave.
The Clearing
March 21, 2018Spring again.
The browns, the ochre,
the brittle death of fall and winter
recast in transcendent greens—
vibrant, transparent, resurgent.
I Teach Six-Year-Olds about Jesus in Sunday School
March 21, 2018A girl I’ve never met meets me at the door,
whines at my leg until I hold her. Thin arms,
thin mouth, a sour smell I overlook while fetching
crayons, glue sticks, snacks. She lifts her dress,
exposes the top of her baggy white tights, looks at me.
We both sing: “Faith is knowing the sun will rise…”
I sit next to her, tap her hands, whisper no.
Drought
March 21, 2018The reservoir was drying up, and the former townspeople of Jordan Gap came to the receding shoreline at the end of winter. They camped on the flat and stood in the mud at the edge…
Accusation
March 21, 2018Nathan hears the accusation during bishopric meeting. “Helen Sheeney is convinced,” the bishop says. “She pulled my wife aside after homemaking meeting. Once she started in, it took nearly an hour to calm her down.…
Latter-day Saints under Siege: The Unique Experience of Nicaraguan Mormons
March 21, 2018The LDS Church is currently gaining many new members in Asia, Africa, and especially Latin America. Nowadays more than 35 percent of the worldwide membership is concentrated in Latin America, compared to about 45 percent in the United States and Canada. By 2020, the majority of Mormons in the world will be Latin Americans, if the current growth rates continue. Judging from current LDS growth rates, the future Mormon heartland will be the Andes and Central America, instead of the Wasatch Front. Rodney Stark is exaggerating, however, when he labels Mormonism the next world religion, since he ignores a drop-out rate for converts that generally exceeds 50 percent.
The Death and Resurrection of the RLDS Zion: A Case Study in “Failed Prophecy” 1930-70
March 21, 2018On Resurrection Sunday, April 1930, Bishop J. A. Koehler of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints attended a priesthood prayer meeting at the Stone Church RLDS congregation in Independence, Missouri. After a week of solemn and joyful conference services remembering the past century of the denomination’s history, men from across the world sat seeking the Lord’s further direction before Easter services.
On Balancing Faith in Mormonism with Traditional Biblical Stories: The Noachian Flood Story
March 21, 2018Describing the religion of the Latter-day Saints, John Taylor said that it “embraces every principle of truth and intelligence pertaining to us as moral, intellectual, mortal and immortal beings, pertaining to this world and the world that is to come. We are open to truth of every kind, no matter whence it comes, where it originates or who believes in it. . . . A man in search of the truth has no particular system to sustain, no particular dogma to defend or theory to uphold.”