Portrait of Agnes
April 5, 2023Listen the Out Loud version of this poem here. Stern little lady,ancestor in an oval frame,I like the way your shoulders slopeand your fingers dangleover the book and the carpetbag skirt.I like the way your…
DiaBLOGue
Cemetery Walk
April 5, 2023Listen the Out Loud version of this poem here. It was somewhere around here, I think.Where they buried that baby,yeah, the one I told you about.No, not by the pioneer obelisksa wife for each sidefresh…
One Body, Multiple Personalities: A Pauline Approach to Dissociative Identity Disorder
April 5, 2023Dissociative Identity Disorder.[1] The words stung more than I thought they would. Dissociative Identity Disorder. The diagnosis did not come as a surprise. I had specifically sought out psychological assessment to evaluate my theory as…
O Magnum Mysterium
April 5, 2023I’ve heard many women say that the day their child was born was the best day of their life, but it was the worst day of mine. After laboring for nearly forty hours, my body…
Model Cars Are Not Cars (And Theories of Atonement Are Not Atonement)
April 5, 2023If you mistake a model car for a real car, you’re going to have problems. I spent much of my life making that mistake in my thinking about atonement. I had read that “God’s justice…
Rethinking Revelation
April 5, 2023When I was about twelve, yet another retelling of the Cinderella story was released into theatres in a magic-free but nonetheless magical version called Ever After. One of my favorite scenes in this film involves…
The Garden I Know
March 29, 2023Listen the Out Loud version of this poem here. In his artistic agony,diamond drops of bloodcovered Christ’s chiseled body,sacred sweat shimmeredin the light of the Passover moon.The Son of God, an altarpiece,in serene pain and…
Judging Israel
March 29, 2023Listen to an interview about this piece here. We sat around a long rectangular table in the local church building. It was tapered at one end, almost trapezoidal. Five men lined each of the long…
On Tradition and a Nonbinary Revolution
March 29, 2023Dialogue 56.1 (Spring 2023): 83–89
A couple months earlier, I had written to a friend back in Utah. It was June and she was celebrating Pride. I asked her to send me something. I’d been feeling terribly lonely in the missionary culture and wanted a physical reminder that there were others like me out in the world. She mentioned pronoun pins, and in a moment of rash decision I asked for “they/them” as well as “she/her.” Why not? I guess I thought, what harm could it do?
How a Mormon Ended Up at Union Theological Seminary: A Step Toward Racial Justice and a Better Church
March 29, 2023Dialogue 56.1 (Spring 2023): 7–50
In the decade since I made that decision, a lot has happened that ultimately reoriented me back to the academy and to theological studies in particular. First, the job I took after graduating from Brigham Young University took me to Boston, Massachusetts. I immediately noticed a refreshing difference between the congregations I attended in Utah and congregations in Boston. These were the most educated people I had ever worshiped with in my adult life, and it was the safest I had ever felt being my authentic self at church.