If you’ve been reading Sunstone and Dialogue for the past five years, you’ve run across multiple examples of Johnny Townsend’s work. One of Mormonism’s most prolific short story writers, he is constantly putting out fiction that is, as D. Michael Quinn puts it, simultaneously “insightful, insulting, quirky-faithful, and funny.” Townsend grew up in New …
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The Call of Abraham
Their fervor triggers a trip to a different dimension. The members of the Gospel Doctrine class are involved in an energetic discussion of the Abrahamic covenant. In my cocoon, I’m aware of what’s going on, of how dynamic the exchanges are as various class members share ways that being part of that covenant blesses …
Deja Vu?
The real question facing the Church with regards to homosexuality is whether there is a genetic element to sexual preference. Many of the issues to be dealt with are similar to those I faced as a young man knowing that colored men could not hold the priesthood yet being told by my parents that …
Highway to Heaven
They say ghosts are the spirits of people who are dealing with loose ends. Urgent unfinished business can make any death untimely and spawn a haunting. Based on this theory, if my wife died tomorrow, I believe she would feel the need to come back as my driving instructor. She would haunt every car I …
“Look” and Live
Meditation on 3 Nephi 28 What do you want after I’m gone?” Zed swallowed. He had expected the question but still was not ready. No one answered. The question echoed in the silence. Which of you, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? If asked for fish, will you give a …
Tools, Not Idols
The next time someone asks me why Mormons don’t discuss the specifics of temple ceremonies, even amongst themselves, I am going to say this: “To leave each of us free to interpret the temple in our own way; to protect it from correlation.” I used to crave more open discussion about temple rituals so that …
Poem: Fact of My Life
My job was once threatened if I published a poem. I lived in another place but in America and knew my rights. I let the poem wait. Oh, I read it aloud once and silence swelled in the room like fog; then someone said, read it again. My job was once threatened if I …
In Memoriam: Linda Sillitoe
A Tribute to Linda Sillitoe by Levi S. Peterson Levi S. Peterson is a former editor of Dialogue and author of novels The Backslider and Aspen Marooney, short-story collections Canyons of Grace and Night Soil, and autobiography A Rascal by Nature, A Christian by Yearning. He lives in Washington with his wife Althea. The …
Faith and the “As If” Factor: Review of Doug Thayer’s “The Tree House”
By Levi S. Peterson At 80, Douglas Thayer goes on writing impressive fiction, as this latest novel shows. Cast in short, simple sentences and concentrating on the concrete instead of the abstract, The Tree House not only captures the rhythms of Mormon life in Provo during the mid-twentieth century but also figures forth the tensions …
People: Issue 161
At Large. TWO ANONYMOUS PARACHUTERS who base jumped from the top of the Church Office Building on 12 November. According to Church employee Annie Beer, the two men landed in a parking lot across the street. By the time police arrived at the scene, the jumpers had sped off in a silver SUV. “It must …