It’s the Schubert piece that does it . . .
tonight you are moved into the dark to come
where white roots are suddenly remembered,
growing beautifully out of soil walls of a cellar
gone half a century . . . white roots
Where deep water widens and silks past
the river island, you move through tall grasses
downhill riverside, crouch through overhang
and find yourself beneath a great
low catalpa, broad leaves
How high fly the crows?
Thirty stories up I’ve seen them
Swimming in currents of air,
As confident as children in puddles.
The fever is on me now.
Since morning I can do nothing
but crack pistachios between
my thumbs and listen
to the woody tinkle of their shells
hitting the floor.
I mutter haiku at the cat
who bats them as they fall.
Sometimes you speak
and I hear
the words between us,
Death does not
disturb me, nor fear
of death.
Driving past the humongous brick building set way back from the street, I do an instant double take. Did I just see what I thought I saw? Did that sign say, “Sinners Welcome Here?” While I’m supposed to be negotiating traffic on my way to Costco, I’m rubbernecking, and I see that the sign says what I thought it said. The words are painted on a shiny plastic, weatherproof banner attached near the top of the building.
Sexuality in antebellum America constituted a set of contradictions. Men should be steely, resolved, and assertive; women ought to be reserved, flighty, and, under the right conditions, sexually explosive. As historian Karen Lystra has observed, “There are no sexual absolutes. Sexual experience is time-bound,” a fact that holds true for the Mormon experience as well.
Dialogue 47.1 (Spring 2014):24–57
his article will examine hospitality as it is found in the Book of Mormon. We will look at instances when a person (or group) invites an outsider (or group of outsiders) into the home or community, making note of how the hospitality is exercised, what motivates it, what role it plays in the Book of Mormon narrative, and what spiritual or religious dimensions it is assigned.
Dialogue 47.1 (Spring 2014):1–23
This conclusion is obviously problematic, as it implies that the early Church repudiated teachings from the Book of Mormon immediately following its publication. Thus there is a need for a reassessment of the relation between early nineteenth-century Universalism and the teachings of the Book of Mormon and subsequent revelations.