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Review: Call to Action: Hope of Nature George B. Handley, The Hope of Nature

The Hope of Nature is structured with three sets of three (I might be tempted here to make a Star Wars three trilogies joke, but I will refrain for the sake of a serious forum).…

Pando: The Secret Life of Trees

Pando extends, a network of aspen one mile south of Fish Lake in central Utah. At eighty thousand years, it is one of the oldest and heaviest living organisms on the planet. Pando has survived…

Death in a Dry Climate | John Bennion, Ezekiel’s Third Wife.

Rachel O’Brien Rockwood Wainwright Harker—the narrator and eponymous heroine of John Bennion’s new mystery novel Ezekiel’s Third Wife, has four last names, none of which is superfluous. Together, they tell a remarkable story about our heroine in the years before the novel begins. Here is the digest version. 

Out of the Garden: The Nature of Revelation in Romanticism, Naturalism, and Modernism

One of the defining preoccupations of the Romanticists—and of the Romantic poets in particular—is the idea that God reveals himself to the human most palpably in a natural setting: to experience the natural world in its wildness is to experience God in his wildness. 

Bodies Material and Bodies Textual: Conflation of Woman and Animal in the Wilderness

As a woman myself, I often wonder about the daughters of Ishmael. What did they think when their father suddenly decided to leave Jerusalem and follow Lehi and his sons into the wilderness? How did they decide who would marry Nephi, Laman, and Lamuel? What was it like giving birth in the wilderness without the life-saving expertise of the midwives in Jerusalem? Did Sariah know enough to guide them through this harrowing experience?

Reading the Word: Spirit Materiality in the Mountain Landscapes of Nan Shepherd

As a graduate student at the time of the 2016 presidential election, I felt the heightened tension of Utah’s vote and the ensuing schism as political and religious beliefs played out on a national stage that foregrounded environmental issues, such as the overturning of land designations for national monuments like Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante.

“To Restore the Physical World”: The Body of Christ, the Redemption of the Natural World, and Mormonism’s Environmental Dilemma

In his article “Whither Mormon Environmental Theology?,” Jason M. Brown suggests that Mormon environmental scholarship and activism focuses on what he calls the “retrieval” of “earth-affirming doctrines” with the hope that the retrieval of these teachings “will foster more environmentally minded orthopraxis among the Mormon faithful.”Brown then goes on to suggest that those retrieved teachings about the earth can be divided into two traditions, the “stewardship tradition” and the “vitalistic tradition.”

“Is this the Promised End?” | Steven L. Peck, The Tragedy of King Leere, Goatherd of the La Sals

Steven L. Peck’s The Tragedy of King Leere, Goatherd of the La Sals is, like many of Peck’s works, almost impossible to categorize. Is it a modern-day ecological interpretation of the famous Shakespearian familial tragedy?…

On Truth | George B. Handley, If Truth Were a Child: Essays

Taking the word “essay” in its root meaning as “an attempt,” BYU humanities professor George Handley’s new book of essays If Truth Were a Child comprises the attempts of the author to reconcile intellectual curiosity…

Can Faith Survive Choice and Circumstance? | Jack Harrell, Caldera Ridge.

Kail Lambert, the protagonist in Jack Harrell’s new novel Caldera Ridge, stands in the front room of the small, older home he and his wife Charlene have bought in rural southeast Idaho. While Charlene works…

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Review: Call to Action: Hope of Nature George B. Handley, The Hope of Nature

The Hope of Nature is structured with three sets of three (I might be tempted here to make a Star Wars three trilogies joke, but I will refrain for the sake of a serious forum).…

Pando: The Secret Life of Trees

Pando extends, a network of aspen one mile south of Fish Lake in central Utah. At eighty thousand years, it is one of the oldest and heaviest living organisms on the planet. Pando has survived…

Death in a Dry Climate | John Bennion, Ezekiel’s Third Wife.

Rachel O’Brien Rockwood Wainwright Harker—the narrator and eponymous heroine of John Bennion’s new mystery novel Ezekiel’s Third Wife, has four last names, none of which is superfluous. Together, they tell a remarkable story about our heroine in the years before the novel begins. Here is the digest version. 

Out of the Garden: The Nature of Revelation in Romanticism, Naturalism, and Modernism

One of the defining preoccupations of the Romanticists—and of the Romantic poets in particular—is the idea that God reveals himself to the human most palpably in a natural setting: to experience the natural world in its wildness is to experience God in his wildness. 

Bodies Material and Bodies Textual: Conflation of Woman and Animal in the Wilderness

As a woman myself, I often wonder about the daughters of Ishmael. What did they think when their father suddenly decided to leave Jerusalem and follow Lehi and his sons into the wilderness? How did they decide who would marry Nephi, Laman, and Lamuel? What was it like giving birth in the wilderness without the life-saving expertise of the midwives in Jerusalem? Did Sariah know enough to guide them through this harrowing experience?

Reading the Word: Spirit Materiality in the Mountain Landscapes of Nan Shepherd

As a graduate student at the time of the 2016 presidential election, I felt the heightened tension of Utah’s vote and the ensuing schism as political and religious beliefs played out on a national stage that foregrounded environmental issues, such as the overturning of land designations for national monuments like Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante.

“To Restore the Physical World”: The Body of Christ, the Redemption of the Natural World, and Mormonism’s Environmental Dilemma

In his article “Whither Mormon Environmental Theology?,” Jason M. Brown suggests that Mormon environmental scholarship and activism focuses on what he calls the “retrieval” of “earth-affirming doctrines” with the hope that the retrieval of these teachings “will foster more environmentally minded orthopraxis among the Mormon faithful.”Brown then goes on to suggest that those retrieved teachings about the earth can be divided into two traditions, the “stewardship tradition” and the “vitalistic tradition.”

“Is this the Promised End?” | Steven L. Peck, The Tragedy of King Leere, Goatherd of the La Sals

Steven L. Peck’s The Tragedy of King Leere, Goatherd of the La Sals is, like many of Peck’s works, almost impossible to categorize. Is it a modern-day ecological interpretation of the famous Shakespearian familial tragedy?…

On Truth | George B. Handley, If Truth Were a Child: Essays

Taking the word “essay” in its root meaning as “an attempt,” BYU humanities professor George Handley’s new book of essays If Truth Were a Child comprises the attempts of the author to reconcile intellectual curiosity…

Can Faith Survive Choice and Circumstance? | Jack Harrell, Caldera Ridge.

Kail Lambert, the protagonist in Jack Harrell’s new novel Caldera Ridge, stands in the front room of the small, older home he and his wife Charlene have bought in rural southeast Idaho. While Charlene works…

The River Rerun

Morning 3, Nankoweap Camp  Across the river, she sees a big brown lump shamble over to the water’s edge. She wants it to be graceful, sleek, to glide through the water, not lumber like a…

When The Mormon Church Invested in Southern Nevada Gold Mines

During the worst economic depression in the history of the United States up to 1929, that of the 1890’s, the highest leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, along with several other church members, purchased a cluster of promising mines and claims in Nye County, Nevada. Desperate for funds after a decade-long judicial onslaught by the federal government, which included confiscation and misuse of church property, the church saw this gold mining enterprise as a good way to recoup church financial security.

The Current Philosophy of Consciousness Landscape: Where Does LDS Thought Fit?

Looking out of my window across my lawn, I see a red toy wheelbarrow tipped over, abandoned beside the sidewalk. Its redness is something I experience distinctly. Undeniably, I might be deceived, and there is no red wheelbarrow there. Maybe someone painted one on the window and I am confused, or maybe I am lying mad in a hospital bed and dreaming. Perhaps it is a hallucination. It could even be that I am the victim of a maniacal government experiment in which scientists are stimulating my brain in a way that makes me think I am seeing a red wheelbarrow. Nevertheless, whatever the cause, for me it is clear—I am seeing a red wheelbarrow.

Drought

The reservoir was drying up, and the former townspeople of Jordan Gap came to the receding shoreline at the end of winter. They camped on the flat and stood in the mud at the edge…

Narnia’s Aslan, Earth’s Darwin, and Heaven’s God

I consider myself an evangelical Christian of the liberal sort, but I have many evangelical Christian relatives, friends, and students who are extremely conservative. Despite mutual respect, it appears that I have little in common with them theologically. My outlook on life and faith leaves me feeling dismayed by what strikes me as their doctrinal and moral rigidity, appalled by their dismissal of the wisdom of other religions, and a little frightened by their willingness to vest absolute authority in an allegedly plain reading of the Bible. 

Dreams of Summer

Even when we are asleep, our minds are active. Scientists surmise that our brains process and sort the events of the day at this time. Spiritual people believe God sometimes uses these moments to communicate…

Field Walking

Jennifer is a mother of three—Sadie in high school, Carson in middle school, Jordan in elementary—which means weekdays start at 6:00 A.M. and quickly unspool, devolving into a mad scramble of showers and hair dryers…

Famine and Scarcity

My grandson, age seven, 
head bent over his crustless peanut 
butter and honey sandwich, 
small bowl of grapes, 

After the Wind

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. 

Review: Call to Action: Hope of Nature George B. Handley, The Hope of Nature

The Hope of Nature is structured with three sets of three (I might be tempted here to make a Star Wars three trilogies joke, but I will refrain for the sake of a serious forum).…

Pando: The Secret Life of Trees

Pando extends, a network of aspen one mile south of Fish Lake in central Utah. At eighty thousand years, it is one of the oldest and heaviest living organisms on the planet. Pando has survived…

Death in a Dry Climate | John Bennion, Ezekiel’s Third Wife.

Rachel O’Brien Rockwood Wainwright Harker—the narrator and eponymous heroine of John Bennion’s new mystery novel Ezekiel’s Third Wife, has four last names, none of which is superfluous. Together, they tell a remarkable story about our heroine in the years before the novel begins. Here is the digest version. 

Out of the Garden: The Nature of Revelation in Romanticism, Naturalism, and Modernism

One of the defining preoccupations of the Romanticists—and of the Romantic poets in particular—is the idea that God reveals himself to the human most palpably in a natural setting: to experience the natural world in its wildness is to experience God in his wildness. 

Bodies Material and Bodies Textual: Conflation of Woman and Animal in the Wilderness

As a woman myself, I often wonder about the daughters of Ishmael. What did they think when their father suddenly decided to leave Jerusalem and follow Lehi and his sons into the wilderness? How did they decide who would marry Nephi, Laman, and Lamuel? What was it like giving birth in the wilderness without the life-saving expertise of the midwives in Jerusalem? Did Sariah know enough to guide them through this harrowing experience?

Reading the Word: Spirit Materiality in the Mountain Landscapes of Nan Shepherd

As a graduate student at the time of the 2016 presidential election, I felt the heightened tension of Utah’s vote and the ensuing schism as political and religious beliefs played out on a national stage that foregrounded environmental issues, such as the overturning of land designations for national monuments like Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante.

“To Restore the Physical World”: The Body of Christ, the Redemption of the Natural World, and Mormonism’s Environmental Dilemma

In his article “Whither Mormon Environmental Theology?,” Jason M. Brown suggests that Mormon environmental scholarship and activism focuses on what he calls the “retrieval” of “earth-affirming doctrines” with the hope that the retrieval of these teachings “will foster more environmentally minded orthopraxis among the Mormon faithful.”Brown then goes on to suggest that those retrieved teachings about the earth can be divided into two traditions, the “stewardship tradition” and the “vitalistic tradition.”

“Is this the Promised End?” | Steven L. Peck, The Tragedy of King Leere, Goatherd of the La Sals

Steven L. Peck’s The Tragedy of King Leere, Goatherd of the La Sals is, like many of Peck’s works, almost impossible to categorize. Is it a modern-day ecological interpretation of the famous Shakespearian familial tragedy?…

On Truth | George B. Handley, If Truth Were a Child: Essays

Taking the word “essay” in its root meaning as “an attempt,” BYU humanities professor George Handley’s new book of essays If Truth Were a Child comprises the attempts of the author to reconcile intellectual curiosity…

Can Faith Survive Choice and Circumstance? | Jack Harrell, Caldera Ridge.

Kail Lambert, the protagonist in Jack Harrell’s new novel Caldera Ridge, stands in the front room of the small, older home he and his wife Charlene have bought in rural southeast Idaho. While Charlene works…

The River Rerun

Morning 3, Nankoweap Camp  Across the river, she sees a big brown lump shamble over to the water’s edge. She wants it to be graceful, sleek, to glide through the water, not lumber like a…

When The Mormon Church Invested in Southern Nevada Gold Mines

During the worst economic depression in the history of the United States up to 1929, that of the 1890’s, the highest leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, along with several other church members, purchased a cluster of promising mines and claims in Nye County, Nevada. Desperate for funds after a decade-long judicial onslaught by the federal government, which included confiscation and misuse of church property, the church saw this gold mining enterprise as a good way to recoup church financial security.

The Current Philosophy of Consciousness Landscape: Where Does LDS Thought Fit?

Looking out of my window across my lawn, I see a red toy wheelbarrow tipped over, abandoned beside the sidewalk. Its redness is something I experience distinctly. Undeniably, I might be deceived, and there is no red wheelbarrow there. Maybe someone painted one on the window and I am confused, or maybe I am lying mad in a hospital bed and dreaming. Perhaps it is a hallucination. It could even be that I am the victim of a maniacal government experiment in which scientists are stimulating my brain in a way that makes me think I am seeing a red wheelbarrow. Nevertheless, whatever the cause, for me it is clear—I am seeing a red wheelbarrow.

Drought

The reservoir was drying up, and the former townspeople of Jordan Gap came to the receding shoreline at the end of winter. They camped on the flat and stood in the mud at the edge…

Narnia’s Aslan, Earth’s Darwin, and Heaven’s God

I consider myself an evangelical Christian of the liberal sort, but I have many evangelical Christian relatives, friends, and students who are extremely conservative. Despite mutual respect, it appears that I have little in common with them theologically. My outlook on life and faith leaves me feeling dismayed by what strikes me as their doctrinal and moral rigidity, appalled by their dismissal of the wisdom of other religions, and a little frightened by their willingness to vest absolute authority in an allegedly plain reading of the Bible. 

Dreams of Summer

Even when we are asleep, our minds are active. Scientists surmise that our brains process and sort the events of the day at this time. Spiritual people believe God sometimes uses these moments to communicate…

Field Walking

Jennifer is a mother of three—Sadie in high school, Carson in middle school, Jordan in elementary—which means weekdays start at 6:00 A.M. and quickly unspool, devolving into a mad scramble of showers and hair dryers…

Famine and Scarcity

My grandson, age seven, 
head bent over his crustless peanut 
butter and honey sandwich, 
small bowl of grapes, 

After the Wind

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.