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Emptying Pockets

March 15, 2018

Unload on the dresser top 
black brick cell phone, keys, 
waxy-wrapped cough drops, 
two mechanical pencils, Hertz 

Beyond (on the Beach)

March 15, 2018

Somewhere beyond our fire’s glow, 
beyond the pops and hisses of the wood, 

somewhere beyond the cool sand 
covering my feet as I curl and uncurl my toes,

The Hosanna Shout

March 15, 2018

When the Mormons asked sculptor Cyrus Dallin
for a statue of their Angel Moroni to top the 
Salt Lake Temple, initially he refused by saying 
he didn’t believe in angels. 

Sabbath Baptism

March 15, 2018

In 1886, Sister Sallie Stephensen 
of Fairview, Idaho, was possessed 
of an evil spirit for a sabbath of weeks. 
The congregation fasted and prayed, but 

Melancholia

March 15, 2018

“I’m sad. 
It feels like the whole world 
is inside me,” says 
my five-year-old grandson, naming, 

Easter

March 15, 2018

My grandson, ten, 
hates the rain, 
as he does this Sunday morning 
when dark clouds bring the sky down.

Communicating Jesus: The Encoding and Decoding Practices of Re-Presenting Jesus for LDS (Mormon) Audiences at a BYU Art Museum

March 15, 2018

There is a growing recognition among scholars that museums are discursively constructed sites. One scholar noted that museums often are merely a “structured sample of reality” where science empowers their message.  Alternatively, museums might encourage a pseudo-religious experience of ritually “attending” them— factors, some critics observe, that reduce the probability of resistant readings by patrons.

“My Principality on Earth Began”: Millennialism and the Celestial Kingdom in the Development of Mormon Doctrine

March 15, 2018

Early Mormonism was thoroughly premillennial.  The saints watched for latter-day signs of the times in anticipation of Jesus Christ’s imminent return, spoke of them in sermons, and published them in newspapers. The righteous would reign for one thousand years while the wicked would be swept off the earth to await their resurrection and judgment. Mormon missionaries urgently preached that God was gathering his elect before Christ’s coming in the clouds—a priority that overshadowed a salvation to-heaven-or-damnation-to-hell eschatology in Mormon discourse of the period. Latter-day Saint views of the very nature of eternal post-mortality, which to the present are considered a distinctive aspect of Mormon belief, developed out of their anticipation of Christ’s millennial reign.