-
Welcome to Arras Theme!
Arras Theme is a WordPress theme designed for news or review sites with lots of customisable features.
-
Recent Posts
- 61 Psaltery & Lyre: Kay Porter, “Mother Mold”
- Ride to Church in Hyderabad, India
- 60 Psaltery & Lyre: Jeremy Windham, “Goliath in Love”
- Flooding the Book of Mormon with the Book of Mormon
- Battle Hymn of My Mormon Mother
- A Celebration of Motherhood
- Motherhood Is Not the Essense of my Personhood
- 3 Little Gurus
- 59 Psaltery & Lyre: James A. Clark, “Elegy for a Stranger”
- [Mormon] Mother’s Prayer for Its Child
-
Tag Cloud
Book of Mormon books children church Cipher on a Wall creative Dear Jack death epistemology faith fakebook families family fear feminism gender god Grondahl homeless homosexuality humor Joseph Smith kids lds life love marriage memories mind mormon mormonism Mormons motherhood music nature parenthood parenting photography poetry religion service sex sexuality spirituality women
Columns Archive
-
Ride to Music and the Spoken Word
Today’s Ride to Music and the Spoken Word comes to us from Katrina Barker Anderson, who took pictures of her family’s ride to Music and the Spoken Word in Salt... -
05 A Mormon in the Cheap Seats: On Testimonies
I like fast and testimony meetings. I like them even though I sometimes feel like I’ve wandered into a UFO convention by mistake. -
Mormon Film Pioneers
I believe we have stories to tell and if we don’t do it, it will be done for us. -
We Are Pioneers
As I was telling my Kindergartner earlier this month that we’re all pioneers in some way. Whenever we stand up for what we believe in or do something because we... -
A Twist on “Pioneer Day”
When it was announced that gays and lesbians would be allowed to marry in New York beginning on July 24, my first thought–as a lifelong Mormon–was, “Pioneer Day!” While we’ve... -
Letters to My Polygamist Ancestors
By Dayna Patterson Letters to My Polygamist Ancestors Dear Charles, What was it like to have three wives? It must have been confusing, especially since you chose women with... -
But With Joy Wend Your Way
Few hymns seem to capture the Mormon spirit so completely or at ts best. The steady beginning building to the gorgeous swell of music and lyrics work together to convey... -
Trekkie
Those who weren’t too busy, too judgmental, too self absorbed and too self-important to drop everything to help someone else are worthy of reenactment and emulation. -
O Pioneers!
One year we had a brown horse in the church parking lot. Bonnet-wearing girls and cowboy-hatted boys took turns “riding” him around the building. Another year, I helped organize a... -
Trek
Mormons all over the U.S. (and elsewhere, perhaps) gathered yesterday to celebrate Pioneer Day–commemorating the entry of Brigham Young and the first group of Mormon pioneers into the Salt Lake... -
04 A Mormon in the Cheap Seats: Build Out, Not Up
Can a religion be built on faith? Just plain faith? Faith that isn’t looking for a promotion, or a pay raise, or that isn’t on its way to... -
Eat, Bray, Shove: Two Men’s Mimicry, Mockery and Mastication Across Northern England
What would you get if the producers of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” combined “My Dinner with Andre ” and “Easy Rider” with some salacious food porn thrown in? Why, you’d have... -
The Gluttonous Baby
For as long as humans have made objects, there have been baby dolls. It’s an almost universal phenomenon that young children play with dolls. Especially if they have younger siblings... -
I, Heather Kathleen Olson Beal, Being of Sound Mind and Body
A few months ago, Brent and I finally managed to complete a task that has been on our to-do list for—gulp—14.5 years. We had a will drawn up (and other... -
Return and Report: The Murakami Edition
Four novels later, I find myself firmly in the critical admirers’ camp. -
Austin Eateries: We Are What We Eat (?)
It’s really cheating for me to write anything for The Wayfarer because I’m a big fan of my comfort zone and try not to leave it too much. And my... -
Claudia’s Ride to Church in Moelv, Norway
Today’s Ride to Church comes to us all the way from Claudia (Faithful Dissident) in Moelv, Norway. Claudia writes: Almost nine years ago, I moved to Moelv, Norway. This town... -
Great Expectations
In 2006, Elder Nelson spoke of his first wife saying, “When people have asked her how she managed with ten children with so little time available from her husband, she... -
03 A Mormon in the Cheap Seats: From Kolob Wikileaks
“The iron rod should only go halfway through the mist—just HALFWAY, not all the way. It’s clear from the picture.” -
Operation Stop Arm
My neighbor Sheri and I watched motorists pass our children’s school bus for years. We took video, called the police, reported tag numbers, complained to the public school department of... -
Modesty, Mormon-style
We try not to rant here at Doves & Serpents. We try to discuss things we’re thinking about, exchange ideas, and ask questions. But I was pushed over the edge... -
Staff Stacks
What the writers of D&S are into right now. -
Earthy Soulful Awakening
I grew up road-tripping to my dad’s favorites: Johnny Cash, Trio: Linda Rondstadt, Emmylou Harris & Dolly Parton, and AM sports radio mixed with a lot of static. So it’s... -
Healing Waters
“You’ll only be baptized once in your life, so it is a very special experience,” my grandmother said, speaking at my eight year old daughter’s baptism last week. After her... -
Walk to Church/Synagogue in Krakow
Today’s Walk to Church/Synagogue comes to us from Jacob Baker, who recently attended a conference in Krakow, Poland. This is sort of cheating because Jacob didn’t really take these pictures... -
02 A Mormon in the Cheap Seats: Our God is Too Small
The problem is that our assumption of order and constancy doesn’t match the diversity, incoherence, and contradictions of lived religion. -
Considering James Bond in a Post-Mad Men World
You, the audience, look through the barrel of an assassin’s rifle at a circular white space as a smartly dressed gentleman strides into view and then he suddenly whirls toward... -
Needing it Now and the Eye of the Storm
As I watched from my TV with a newborn baby, I was physically ill at the sight of those not able to escape New Orleans as the ravaging effects of... -
Passing up Girls’ Night Out
I consider myself a friendly, outgoing person. I had a great group of girls I was friends with in high school. I like to think people find me easy to... -
Rasputin Records
My husband and I both enjoy a really broad range of musical genres. As such, I’ve often wondered – how will our kids find a way to fulfill the role... -
Independence Day
Becoming a citizen was a long, expensive process for my husband. I can’t imagine how difficult it was for those people from Burkina Faso, Serbia, Jamaica, Colombia, Cambodia that... -
Erin’s Ride to a 10-Day Silent Vipassana Course
Our beloved Erin just wrapped up a 10-day silent vipassana meditation retreat, or as some people call it, “meditation boot camp.” Hopefully she’ll tell us more about it here later.... -
This Wild Playground
This week I found myself hanging upside-down from aerial silks in an artist’s studio in Oakland, when the blasphemous words came out of my mouth, “I can’t!” I found new... -
01 A Mormon in the Cheap Seats: On Being a Church Loser
If my religion were a sports stadium, then I’m in the nosebleed section. I’ve got a big Diet Coke, a bucket of popcorn, and the field is the size of... -
Winter’s Bone
Among its confluence of forces and traditions, it is impossible to ignore that the mythological potential of America is enabled, at least in part, by its sheer size. As the... -
Joining the Jesus Freaks
Do we believe, deep down, that the poor are that way because God wants them to be? -
The Evil One
Does reading make you a better person? -
The Great I AM
Stopped at a light one Saturday morning, I met some teenage girls and their mothers with buckets requesting money to send the girls to basketball championships. My first reaction was... -
JaneAnne’s Ride to Church in Portland
Today’s Ride to Church comes to us from the West Coast–Portland, Oregon. JaneAnne writes: “I live in Willamette Heights, Northwest Portland, Oregon, and attend church in Beaverton. Although I mostly... -
Patriarchs I Have Known and Loved
My father grew up in a troubled home, poor as coal dust. A child of the depression and of divorce, he lined his broken-soled shoes with newsprint. As a child,... -
Joseph Smith and the Archetypes of the Collectively Unconscious Male
In their 1990 publication, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine, Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette suggested during the apex of the “men’s movement” that males... -
Men On Film
As part of this week’s discussion on “Mature Masculinity,” I thought I’d take a closer look at films and television shows that depict men grappling with questions of identity and... -
Proxy Work
As a lone-parent, five-child family on welfare, we were hardly the ideal Mormon family. -
‘Men’ in the Dock
This is a post about men. This is a post about women. No wait, this is a post about ‘men’. This is a post about the relationships between women and... -
Atticus Finch: Fatherhood Gold Standard
For years, I’ve cited To Kill a Mockingbird as my favorite book whenever asked. But I’ve read a lot of books since I first read that book in ninth grade... -
Burying the Weapons
When I became a mother I was certain my children would grow up enlightened. And for me enlightenment meant my children would not ascribe to any traditional gender stereotypes or... -
A Most Important Proclamation
When I was about six years old, my Dad walked me to primary class. We passed a man in the ward who nodded at the baby girl in my dad’s... -
Heidi & Torben’s Ride to Church in Long Melford, England
Today’s ride to church comes to Doves & Serpents from our beloved Heidi, who writes Stacks for us every Tuesday, and her brother Torben. This is the parish church... -
Welcome to ‘Mature Masculinity Week’
Grr! Hmph! (Flex!) It’s Father’s Day, and that means that the next seven days on D&S will be dedicated to that strange cultural elaboration on the XY chromosome: it’s ‘Mature... -
Stories and Stone
Having arrived in London last week on an ordinary mid-week mid-morning, I exited the lofty frame of St Pancras International Station, onto Pentonville Road. Consulting the compass on my phone,...
