Category: Issue 172

Adam and Steve and the Empty Sea: A Play

By Matthew Greene Adam & Steve and the Empty Sea by Matthew Greene received its world premiere at Plan-B Theatre Company (Salt Lake City, Utah) 31 January–10 February, 2013, directed by Jason Bowcutt, starring Logan Tarantino as Steve and Topher Rasmussen as Adam.   AUTHOR’S NOTE   The aphorism goes that you should “write what …

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Tabernacle of Flesh: Fiction

By Eric Freeze Tonight, the Brigham Young University men’s chorus would sing in the Mormon Tabernacle. When Darcy was growing up, he watched general conference—listening as the prophet spoke via satellite to everyone in the world. Between speakers, the Tabernacle Choir performed arrangements of the hymns: “For the Beauty of the Earth,” “How Great Thou …

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Understanding the Shadow

By Michael Farnworth   IN HER BOOK Kitchen Table Wisdom Rachel Naomi Remen tells about a time her family was assembling a large jigsaw puzzle. Being only three or four at the time, she couldn’t really help, but she watched plenty. As she did, the darker puzzle pieces began to remind her of spiders and …

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The Living and the Telling

By Lisa Torcasso Downing THE LATE EVENING SKY is black, overcast—the atmosphere dissected by a misty line of streetlamps. My window is rolled down, my hand raised to the night. Salt air blows through my fingers. “There it is,” he says, followed by, “Jesus.” I see the yellow light of the rental car’s blinker flash …

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Sacrificing the Lectures on Faith

By James P. Harris IN EARLY 1921, Elder James E. Talmage lED A committee, that included Elders Joseph Fielding Smith and John A. Widtsoe, tasked with overseeing changes to the Doctrine and Covenants. It was this committee that ultimately recommended the removal of the “Lectures on Faith,” which had been bound at the front of …

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A Fascinating Life

By Curt Bench IN NEARLY FORTY years as an LDS bookseller, I have met or done business with people along the entire Mormon spectrum, from general authorities to fundamentalist Mormons, and with pretty much every type of Mormon or anti-Mormon in between. In the early 1980s, I once counted Mark W. Hofmann as not only …

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Books of Remembrance

By Jamie Littlefield EVERY MONTH OR so, I haunt the shelves of the Provo Deseret Industries store. In the furthest corner of the room under the florescent lights I find rows of Mormon books—many old, many fading, many out-of-date. Given away by families and ward libraries and grandparents’ estates. I could flip through these books …

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A Joseph Smith Too Small

Philip L. Barlow is Leonard J. Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University. Earlier this year, Oxford University Press published an updated version of his classic book, Mormons and the Bible. The following excerpt is from its new preface. IN RECENT YEARS I have come to judge [Joseph Smith’s] project as …

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