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When I showed up the next week (closer to 10:10 a.m. this time), the little old lady said, “You came back.” I had found my spiritual home.
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“I don’t know much,” I think to myself, “but I know there is truth in their steady breathing, and in their dirty laundry scattered on the floor.”
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For women, this isn’t allowed. If I were my brother, no one would notice. I’m breaking the rules
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Instead of spinning narratives that minimize our old beliefs, make us feel superior, and make nodding rubes out of the orthodox, we should admit that we aren’t — and weren’t...
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Politics is like blood sport at our house. We love it. I have a picture of Kennedy as a newborn, sitting in one of those vibrating rocker seats, “watching” Meet...
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Had I simply refused to see it? Turned a blind eye out of conformity? Why, after decades in the church, did these things suddenly bother me?
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She pointed to two girls and told them, then she pointed to me. “You, with the blonde, your Goddess is as clear as the blue sea on our coasts. Your...
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The premonition was followed by two additional thoughts. I needed to come out of the closet. I needed to resign formally from the church.
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For other cartoons in this series, click here. This cartoon, as always, is posted with the kind permission of The Sunstone Foundation and Calvin Grondahl.
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My fingers glide across your nape, shoulders and waist. . .
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I teach some combination of undergraduate teacher education courses and graduate education courses. Most of my students are college juniors, so they’ve had a couple years of experience before they...
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Everyone knows the parable of the starfish. Some of us even have a framed print of the parable, maybe a shadow box with an actual dried starfish, hanging in the...
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For other cartoons in this series, click here. This cartoon, as always, is posted with the kind permission of The Sunstone Foundation and Calvin Grondahl.
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Doesn’t matter what you call it. What matters is that it calls you. It’s been calling poets and preachers, artists and alcoholics all along. People who see things that aren’t...
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I’m a faithful skeptic, a doubting believer; this is why these spiritual experiences were so unexpected.
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Heather Olson Beal is a regular blogger at D&S. See her complete bio on the “About Us” page.
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What the writers of D&S are into now.
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On one of the nights in the last two weeks when the Olympics were on, I got up from my home office chair, left the computer, and went into the...
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I have felt those same feelings in and around mosques, synagogues, and churches of many different Christian denominations. Let’s add mountaintops and porch swings, too.
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Mormonism isn’t going anywhere, and it’s not going to stop being a conservative institution. But Brooks and other liberal Mormons aren’t enabling Mormonism’s reactionary side.
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It all feels organic and authentic in a way Church no longer does. Yet something about the early morning routine, the weekly exercise and exhaustion, the socializing with people...
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Was it all in my head? Maybe. Was it a product of my environment? Maybe. Was it the result of a physiological condition? Maybe. But regardless of the cause, the...
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In June, we took a family vacation to New York. We spent 6 days in New York City and then rented a car and drove to upstate New York. We...
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This one’s for Heather. :)For other cartoons in this series, click here. This cartoon, as always, is posted with the kind permission of The Sunstone Foundation and Calvin Grondahl.
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This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. That thought thrummed constantly below the surface, a drumbeat following me everywhere.
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Bennett Durkan is pursuing an M.A. in English at Stephen F. Austin State University.
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There’s an awful lot of “hate” being thrown around on-line and in the media these days. Mormons and evangelicals hate gays. Chick-fil-A (the business and apparently, every employee of the...
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The three of us met in a park one night and I basically gave them permission to date. It was weird, but at the same time, I felt like God...
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Of all the superhero catch phrases, Wonder Woman’s frequent invocation of “Merciful Minerva!” puzzled me most as a kid since Minerva (the Roman version of Athena) represented wisdom and learning,...
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I kept toward the back, filled with the peace that comes from doing the right thing. I carried a sign that read, “Sorry We’re Late” and took in the positive...
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Today’s Ride to “Church” (=Sensoji Temple) comes to us from Emily: In May of this year, I had the opportunity to take a group of five 8th grade students on...
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You might deride liberal Mormons for their heterodoxy, but they are doing your job for you. They have translated Mormonism into a language that is intelligible to the larger public,...
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For other cartoons in this series, click here. This cartoon, as always, is posted with the kind permission of The Sunstone Foundation and Calvin Grondahl.
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God knows that I have some deep and abiding struggles–religious conundrums with which I have grappled for years.
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Angela Felsted is a musician, poet, and nature lover. Her work has appeared in issue fifteen of Drown in Your Own Fears, in Chantarelle’s Notebook, and on her blog. Her...
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The problem with McBride’s “Threats to Chick-fil-A are a Threat to Religious Liberty” article in Meridian Magazine is that she doesn’t seem to understand what religious liberty is or why...
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I’ve been really enjoying watching the Olympics the last few days. The kids planned an opening ceremonies party on Friday night. They made “patriotic eagles,” red-white-and-blue strawberries, and Olympic rings...
