A chiastic article in a modern newspaper

Yesterday, I posted a link to a piece by Jack Welch about his discovery of chiastic structures in the Book of Mormon and his subsequent experience with the study of chiasmus there and elsewhere:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2016/01/forty-five-years-of-chiasmus-conversations-correspondence-criteria-and-creativity.html#comment-2436444870

My friend Michael De Groote, an attorney and writer (and, for years, a reporter for the Deseret News), posted a comment in response, and I liked it so much that I decided to feature it in a separate blog entry:

One of his favorite articles for the Deseret News, says Brother De Groote, “was about how Jack Welch discovered chiasmus in the Book of Mormon.  I wrote it all as one big chiasmus with the center point being where he discovered it as a missionary. My editor almost deleted a few sentences because they ‘seemed redundant.’  It was not any easy task to massage the true story into this form — so I have a lot of respect for how difficult it is.”

Here’s a link to the article:  http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705383623/How-missionary-found-Book-of-Mormon-secret.html?pg=all

“I recommend,” he says, “for anyone to try writing a story from their life in chiasmus.  It forces you to make interesting choices in how to tell the story.  Each parallel item emphasizes things.  You look for interesting connections leading up to and away from the center point.  It is a different way of thinking.”

But, of course, according to some critics, this is precisely the sort of thing into which the stumbling, semi-literate farm boy Joseph Smith blundered by sheer incompetent but remarkably fortunate chance.