Risen and Rising
My fundamental belief as a Latter-day Saint is that we are continuously in process of either blossoming or withering, that our potential is infinite and our mortality only one phase of our eternal...
View ArticleDeath of a Latter-day Saint
Embedded in this post is a youtube link to my father’s funeral. This is something I would want everyone studying the Latter-day Saint faith to listen to as an example of what a Mormon life is or can...
View ArticleRobert Blair Obituary, Part 4: The Story Teller’s Last Stories
Note: This post includes a photo of Robert Blair’s lifeless body in the last part. If photos of dead bodies cause you anxiety, please do not continue. I have written the previous obituary segments in...
View ArticleOn a Day When I Miss My Dad
I put a photo of an ultrasound into Dad’s coffin on February 27. The viewing before his funeral hadn’t started yet, and no one was watching. The ultrasound was of the fetus who is still becoming...
View ArticleSalvador: The Truth behind the Fiction, Part 3
I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken. (Oliver Cromwell) Daniel Choc was one of Dale Grover’s most ardent supporters, having lived on the plantation for two...
View ArticleSalvador: The Truth Behind the Fiction, Part 5
1 John 2:16 – For all that [is] in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. I am a living testimony to the fact that...
View ArticleSalvador: The Truth Behind the Fiction, Part 6
Blessed be the name of my God, for his Spirit hath not altogether withdrawn from me, or else where is thy glory, for it is darkness unto me? And I can judge between thee and God; for God said unto me:...
View ArticleBirthday Thoughts
On June 7, I turned sixty-one. My two best friends, Jackie Selck Clegg and Elizabeth (Buffy) Cannon Wright, both died in their forties, Jackie of cancer and Buffy in a car crash. My aunt Carolyn also...
View ArticleThe First Vision–beyond words
It was years afterwards that Joseph Smith made his first attempt to describe what we Mormons refer to as “The First Vision.” Certainly, making a pamphlet boiling down a theophany to mere words was...
View ArticleRenewing Our Imaginations
When I’ve taught creative writing, I have asked my students to look at the world with “poetic eyes.” I have asked two questions at the beginning of class: “Who or what did you fall in love with?” and...
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