There are at least two very important things that I learned from literary theory, especially the sometimes infamous deconstructionist variety. The first is the value of very close readings. There is nothing like a close reading to bring out the richest and fullest range of possibilities in a text. It is really only a means to an end, however, even though it is often assumed, wrongly, by deconstructive readers that a close reading that merely complicates an oversimplified interpretation of... Read more

I guess it must be the approaching milestone of turning fifty, but I am in a meditative mood these days about life. Well, the truth is, I think I have always been a meditative type. I used to write bad poems when I was a teenager that were ridiculous attempts at philosophizing about life (no, I won’t share them) and later in my twenties and my thirties I dabbled in journal writing but it was usually the kind of stuff... Read more

The Lord is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him.             Lamentations 3:25 For I have learned, in whatsoever state I am in, therewith to be content. I know how to be abased and I know how to abound: everywhere and in everything I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and suffer need.             Philippians 4: 11-12 There is scarcely a moment in life when we cannot... Read more

Service opens the world to us. That, anyway, is what I have experienced in Guatemala where for the past 17 years I have joined a team of eye surgeons about every other year to work in a remote hospital in the highlands among people who are among some of the most underserved by modern healthcare in our hemisphere. I have no medical expertise, although I grew up wanting to become a doctor, but I do have Spanish language abilities that... Read more

  I have been blogging here for two years, and throughout this time, I have been chiefly interested in the quest for community. I understand community to be something that is achieved when we find “unity with” (as the word implies) others, be they family and friends, strangers and foreigners or even enemies, as well as unity, or at least harmony, with place and within our ecological context. Unity is achieved when we overcome selfishness and enmity, when anger is... Read more

Can people of faith be one even or especially if we aren’t in agreement on politics? In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul exhorts us to be worthy of our vocation as Christians. We do this, he says, by “endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” This unity comes with work, “with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love.” For Paul, at least, it is not only possible, but requisite... Read more

Recently an article in the Salt Lake Tribune raised the timely question, Is air pollution a moral issue? In it faith leaders from a variety of communities in Utah answered the question from their particular perspective. This is what the LDS church said: “While LDS Church leaders have not spoken specifically to issues of air quality in Utah, the church teaches that all humankind are stewards over the Earth and should gratefully use what God has given, avoid wasting life... Read more

Pablo Neruda once said that if you didn’t know southern Chile and the Chilean forest, you didn’t know this planet. He wasn’t the first great poet to be guilty of bioregional chauvinism, of that kind of local pride that tends toward exaggeration and overstatement. But then again, having been here a few times and explored the area, I am not about to tell you he is wrong. As I have written before, I believe every place, just like every person,... Read more

“Why were they imprisoned, your parents?” I asked my new friend, Tito, who was introduced to me through a mutual friend, someone in fact who had baptized him into the LDS church some twenty-five years ago. (more…) Read more

Twenty-six years ago, I was a student in a study abroad program in West Berlin. This was in the spring and summer of 1988, one year before the Berlin Wall came down. Before I left, I had told one of my Spanish professors of my intention to go to Berlin, and he told me that I should look up his close friend, Antonio Skarmeta, a Chilean novelist of considerable fame (most known for his novel that was the basis for... Read more