Skin of Garments
May 13, 2019Before I clothe myself in the holy garments of my grandmother’s priest-
hood, my hands thin cocoa butter over the veins of my temple.
I have to protect my skin.
Before I clothe myself in the holy garments of my grandmother’s priest-
hood, my hands thin cocoa butter over the veins of my temple.
I have to protect my skin.
The beach is my temple,
The water the voice of God shooshing toward me, inviting, calm,
The stones the decorations that light the fire of the pillar,
The sand the handshake that draws me to the holy of holies.
Had I one word to describe our Temple,
The word used would undoubtedly be “white.”
The corridors inside all glow with light,
And purity within this space is ample.
What I want is between softness and stone,
between god and Adam— what I want,
is something between fruits and meats.
I want to move on the water and out of the water,
I want to hang from the tree and rot in the earth.
If a man has a dream and the dream is from God and the man writes a
play based on the dream, the God, and other things he believes to be Godly
If a man has an experience one might classify as transcendent and the
man tries to put that wordless vision into words and practices
Dialogue 52.1 (Spring 2019): 45–76
A Feminist Family Home Evening discussion with Maxine Hanks regarding women in the church as seen through temple theology.
Dialogue 52.1 (Spring 2019): 33–43
Ostler addresses the problems with what she terms the “Standard Model of Polygamy.” She discusses how these problems might be resolved if it is put into a new type of model that she terms “Queer Polygamy.”
Dialogue 52.1 (Spring 2019): 17–32
But the experience of women as women, their wilderness crescent,
is unshared with men—utterly other—and therefore to men, unnatural.
Dialogue 52.1 (Spring 2019): 17–32
I do not lend the weight of truth to the language of ritual. Such language is symbolic. But even in the context of symbolism, language that is so preferential toward men and dismissive of women—especially when such language more aptly demonstrates the bias of the writers than the purpose of the ritual—needs to be removed.
A Note from the Art Editor
Robert Greenwell, Letter to the Editor