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 my experience, it just feels selfish to keep a miraculous experience to oneself. One wants to spread the joy. In fishing as in life, one learns that getting the right results comes after careful preparation, knowledge, skill, planning have done all they can do. Then something... Read more

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 someone who has been touched in the most personal and painful way by the effects of mental illness on a brother who took his life many years ago, I simply want to reiterate the truthfulness of his words. (more…) Read more

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 true that familiarity breeds contempt, as the saying goes, but familiarity is also the only way to test and develop true love. Religion is shallow if it only fosters love of strangers, of mythic heroes, or of extraordinary people. The great test of... Read more

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 the polis and the role of imagining alternative worlds within the context of lived experience. To what extent does art offer a frivolous and perhaps meaningless alternative reality to the concerns that press hard upon us each day? When, on the... Read more

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 the choir perform many times too, of course. I love choral music, especially sacred music, but I also love the gritty voice of a balladeer, someone who sings from the rooted individual experiences of loss, error, political and social disappointment, and personal redemption.... Read more

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 persistent in our history is the strained relationship between faith and science. Take, for example, the recent news that Rep. Chris Stewart is challenging the science behind the EPA’s enforcement of clean air policies. It turns out that the science he is criticizing is, in part, produced by... Read more

  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 because it implies, for some people, that the book has somehow been demoted from its sacred status. I don’t see why or how this is the case. In my mind, to read something “as literature” can only mean reading it... Read more

(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), while on the other end of the spectrum 10% are adamantly dismissive and another 15% are at least doubtful about it. Interestingly, the majority of Americans are either concerned (26%) or cautiously concerned (29%) about the theory. If the political culture of my home state is any indication, the deniers in Utah and in mainstream Mormon... Read more

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 myself who was born in Utah but raised and educated on both coasts, I can sympathize with the difficulty of penetrating such peculiar communities that are seemingly out of sync with mainstream America. Living as I do in a city that is the third largest... Read more

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 included tape recordings that my family and I sent back and forth to each other during my two-year mission in Venezuela in 1985 and 1986. It is a bit surreal, not to mention highly sentimental, to hear your mother’s voice speaking with love and concern for you when you... Read more