Summer 2015
The Summer 2015 issue begins with Cory Crawford and "The Struggle for Female Authority in Biblical and Mormon Theology" followed by "On Virtue: What Bathseba Taught Me About My Maligned Sisters" by Mel Henderson. There are three personal voices featured in this issue, Kim Abunuwara gives her thoughts on the Provo temple, Mary Bradford writes "Follow the Light, Lulie," and Tracie Lamb provides perspective in "The Iron Rod and The Eightfold Path." If that isn't enough, this issue features a lot of poetry, as well as a work of fiction, several reviews, and a sermon to finish the issue.
Dialogue 48.2 (Summer 2015): 1–57
Although race and gender are connected in 2 Nephi 26:33, the historical origins of the gender ban have not yet been addressed with the same degree of attention in Church discourse.
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.
Dialogue 48.2 (Summer 2015): 1–57
Although race and gender are connected in 2 Nephi 26:33, the historical origins of the gender ban have not yet been addressed with the same degree of attention in Church discourse.
Welden Shumway wasn’t so much scandalized when Brother B left his wife and took up with a young gentile woman as he was confused. Why would a priesthood holder ignore his covenants like that? Welden…
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.
Emma Lou Thayne may have been the most expansive person I have ever met. She managed to transform every event in her life into grist for her creative mill. Accidents and illnesses that would fell a normal person formed the sculpture that was her finest work of art—her own life. She once said: “I may never be a sculptor. But in my own realms of endeavor with my own limited abilities and training—and ridiculously wide-ranging inclinations—I know this: If I focus, let go and wait, holiness will visit. The muse will whisper, the thought will arrive.”She understood that her ability to focus was the secret of many of her amazing contributions.
My brother died recently from complications after back surgery and a life of addiction. He was forty-nine. His death was hard enough, but the ensuing drama with my mother and sister—the last of my immediate family—widened the rift between us so much that I felt as if I’d lost them all.
You do not have to do it again
any of it. Only if you care to.
You do not have to hold onto being anyone, anywhere.
Enough is more than plenty.
Musky as the cedar drawer
in Grandma’s standing metal trunk,
a genie scent, improbable and
distant as the sound of hooves on sand
God was not in the wind
and not in the earthquake.
God was not in the fire,
nor in the heavy rain
when levees breached as easily as living room walls.
Even manna stops tasting sweet
after so many plates
I said to the Christmas ham,
endlessly succulent,
What kind of monster spits a wad of gum in a urinal?
Blue. Brain-folded.
Pregnant with identifying evidence.
DNA. Marks from teeth
Zarahemla, the eternal city, is dust; as is everything that was.
In vision I see the world that comes: polio, lupus, Holocaust.
Disaster and diaspora are at once preamble and epitaph
to the good and careless God who makes me to wander and to fast
on unleavened hope to bury this last burden and be done.
The miracle is my evidence of thee: Urim,Thummim, Liahona
It’s only after hanami,
Season of cherry blossom-viewing,
That I meet Christ in Fukuoka
As all the petals are leaving.
He startles me in every spent sakura—
The term “liberalism” with all its rhetorical permutations—self-identifying as a “liberal,” defending principles of “liberty,” showing “liberality” in one’s interactions with others, etc.—is a contested concept in America. It’s both an adjective and a noun.…
I somehow lived my first twenty-nine years never having heard of Fascinating Womanhood, a how-to-save-your-marriage manual cum-lifestyle popularized by a Mormon housewife in the early 1960s. Thanks to historian and author Julie Debra Neuffer, that…
My mother died recently from complications of Alzheimer’s. Because four of my siblings live near my parents and were helping my dad with arrangements, my sister Carol and I decided to fly on Sunday for the Tuesday morning service and then stay longer after the funeral. We arrived at my dad’s apartment Sunday afternoon, anticipating some quiet hours of reminiscing or just relaxing.
