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Provo Tabernacle: My Strange and Lonely Place

March 13, 2018

My grandmother knew where people went when they died. I feel less certain, though my continual return to her faith is a necessary part of me, and the humility at the core of Christianity argues for a return. The recent fire, destruction, and transformation of the Provo Tabernacle as a temple have been both a personal allegory as well as a symbol for the growing LDS Church. For this Provo girl, the tabernacle is a historic and paradoxical representation of the tension that exists between the past and the present, between orthodoxy and belief. 

On Virtue: What Bathsheba Taught Me about My Maligned Sisters

March 13, 2018

It is early evening in ancient Jerusalem, and a beautiful young Jewish woman, recently wed, carries a small bundle of clean clothing and a linen towel. Her sandals pad against the limestone pathway that borders the synagogue. She is on her way to the community mikvah, a font-like, open-air, recessed pool designed for ritual bathing, where a few other women may or may not already be waiting their turn. This is a devotion the women of her faith observe once a month, seven days after their menstrual cycle ends, in order to be “purified from [their] uncleanness,” to use the words from 2 Samuel, chapter 11. While the mikvah is enclosed for the privacy and protection of the women, it’s still possible for someone with a particular vantage point—say, someone on the roof of the king’s palace, perhaps—to illicitly watch a woman complete her ritual, to watch her disrobe and completely immerse herself in the sanctified waters of the mikvah before she emerges to dress herself in fresh clothing. Thus, according to her obedience to the law, the young wife Bathsheba is restored to purity. 

Trajectory and Momentum

March 13, 2018

It is a privilege to speak to you today as your bishop, but also a responsibility that deeply humbles me. I pray that the Spirit will be with me. 

First, let me address one of the most important groups in our congregation today—the Primary children. This meeting is going to be a little longer than normal, so all of you in the Primary please feel free to stand up and shake your arms for a few seconds.

Families are Forever and Ever and Ever | Vivian Kleiman, dir., Families Are Forever

March 13, 2018

Families Are Forever is a short film about a Latter-day Saint family, the Montgomerys, living in central California who have a gay son who came of age during Proposition 8, the California initiative to affirm the definition of marriage as being between one woman and one man. Explaining their active involvement in supporting the initiative, the mother, Wendy, says, “If the Church asks you to do something, you do it.” Her son Jordan, whose homosexuality was unknown to his parents at the time, overheard them talking about the “disgusting” and “horrible” people who opposed Prop 8.

Guilty as Charged? | Mormonism in Nazi Germany David Conley Nelson, Moroni and the Swastika: Mormons in Nazi Germany

March 13, 2018

Moroni and the Swastika arose, in part, as a response to a query put to the author about the persecution of Mormons in the Third Reich. David Conley Nelson describes how his stepson, raised on the stories of Mormon persecution and Latter-day Saints’ willingness to endure much for the sake of the gospel, made the inference that Mormons must have been among the victims of Nazi Germany. This query led to a research paper, a presentation at the Mormon History Association’s annual meeting, and ultimately a doctoral dissertation and a book. 

Confident Interpretations of Silence | David Conley Nelson, Moroni and the Swastika: Mormons in Nazi Germany

March 13, 2018

David Conley Nelson’s Moroni and the Swastika, although based on the author’s doctoral dissertation, is not at heart a scholarly book. It is, rather, a polemical work dressed up in academic regalia. While its footnotes and bibliography give it the appearance of scholarly earnest, its primary commitment is not to placing events in historical context, or to giving a balanced account of primary sources and secondary literature, or to weighing the evidence for or against a given proposition, but to launching accusations against Mormons in Nazi Germany and LDS Church leaders in the United States. 

The Righteous Road

March 13, 2018

My mom held her hand over the phone. “It’s Reed,” she whispered. I took the phone and leaned against the countertop. “Hello,” I said. “Hello.” “What, Derrick? No call?” Reed asked. “I didn’t know you…

Tao Song

March 13, 2018

We create ourselves as we go: 
            memories folding inward 
                        like bread dough kneaded, 
                                    brain convolutions, or 
                                                tangible patterns on the shore. 

Canto 12

March 13, 2018

Lightning’s no easy light to see alive reflecting  
Joseph’s mind : No magic bottle holds it nor do I
Believe it possible, try as I will to engage in mirrors
As images : how can I imagine what ignited flashing glass