Love and Losses
I recently had the unique opportunity to hear recordings made on cassette tape over thirty years ago, recordings that my mother carefully preserved until she recently transferred them to CD. These...
View ArticleA Mormon Sense of Place, as Seen by a Non-Mormon
Mark Twain was perhaps the first of outside visitors to Mormon Utah, arriving with pen in hand, eager to give account of the strangeness and oddity of Mormon community life. For a Mormon writer like...
View ArticleAn Appeal To Those Concerned But Not Yet Alarmed By Climate Change
(This is cross-posted at http://earthstewardship.org/) According to a recent study done at Yale University only 13% of Americans are alarmed about anthropogenic, or human-caused, global warming (AGW),...
View ArticleReading Literature as a Religious Practice
A course devoted to reading the Book of Mormon as literature made headlines recently. As happy as I am to see such a course, I don’t really see why this should be news. I guess maybe it is news...
View ArticleScience, Faith, and Policy
Living in Utah provides interesting up-close observations of tensions that are being worked out within Mormon culture on a public stage. One tension that is not unique to Mormonism but is nevertheless...
View ArticleOn Music and Community
Last night I had the unusual opportunity to hear James Taylor sing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. I have seen JT in concert many times. If I remember correctly, that was my fifth. And I have seen...
View ArticleOn Poetry and Politics, or Why We Can’t Seem to Stop Fighting
In honor of Seamus Heaney’s life so well lived, I revisited one of my favorite essays of his, “The Redress of Poetry.” What Heaney addresses in this essay is the age old question of the role of art in...
View ArticleBishops, Lay Clergy, and the Quest for Community
Several experiences lately have caused me to reflect on the nature of a lay clergy in the LDS church and the duty that we all share to sustain each other in our various responsibilities. It might be...
View ArticleMental Illness and the Atonement
Inspired by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland’s masterful talk on mental illness, I have been reflecting on the great hope that is in Christ’s suffering on our behalf. I don’t want to repeat myself, but as...
View ArticleFishing for Metaphors
Fishers are compulsive storytellers. Maybe it is because they have spent so many hours for just a few minutes of excitement and this is their way of justifying this profligate expenditure of time. In...
View ArticleThere Are Many Gifts
The requirements of gospel living are really very simple. Jesus taught us that it boils down to two things. The first is to love God with all our heart, mind, might and soul. God wants the affections...
View ArticleOn Science and Religion
The great artist Andy Goldsworthy in the documentary about his work, Rivers and Tides, is seen gathering roots and twigs at the base of a tree in his home in Scotland. He stitches these small pieces of...
View ArticleThe Quest for Great Mormon Literature
When I was in college, I had the privilege of listening to a reading by the great writer Wallace Stegner. He came to a student dorm and did a reading from his novel, Wolf Willow. In my family he was a...
View ArticleThe Poetry of Everyday
I remember my daughter, Camilla, all of six years old when we were on a hike in southern Utah. She was a quiet and meditative child, one not prone to outbursts of excessive zeal, and she was squatted...
View ArticleGrateful To Be An “Unworthy Creature”
As usual at this time of year, I find myself reflecting on the blessings of life. I have already elaborated on them here, and not much has changed since last year. I still recognize how profoundly...
View ArticleWhy Working For Conservation Is Good For Democracy
Today it was my immense honor to receive the Nature Conservancy of Utah’s Conservation Partner of the Year award. I am posting here the remarks I gave at a meeting of the board held at the University...
View ArticleGiving
Let us suppose that the rich young man who came to Jesus to ask what more he could do to inherit the kingdom of God represents you. At first you might protest either because you do not think of...
View ArticleThe Biggest LDS News of 2013
It has been an eventful year in the LDS community and in Utah. I think it is healthy that we are engaged in a robust discussion about the definition of marriage. I have seen some promising signs that...
View ArticleChile Journal #1
I am currently on a research trip to Chile for a novel that I am writing. It is a story about a young LDS Chilean woman, an MFA student at BYU, who was raised in Utah but who in 2002 returns to her...
View ArticleChile Journal #2
It has been an overwhelming week thus far, and it will be hard to summarize the extent of what I have learned and experienced. As I mentioned, I am here to research the context of the period of the...
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