Looking at early Mormon poetry through the Mormon trek, I realized this week that just a few poets wrote a large portion (perhaps even a majority) of the poetry published in Mormon periodicals. Most LDS Church members recognize three of these poets: Eliza R. Snow, Parley P. Pratt, and William Wines Phelps. The other two, [...]

In my searches through early Mormon literature, I recently came across a somewhat unusual item: a  2-canto poem from 1841, titled The Latter-day Saints by “Omer, author of Eliza or the Broken Vow.” The unusual part is not the poem or its title, but rather the reference to the earlier work, which could, if found, [...]

Google has released a new tool to play with, its “Books ngram viewer,” which allows users to look at the frequency of word and phrase use over time, based on the data available in its Google Books program. By typing a word or phrase into the viewer, you can see the proportion (% of all [...]

As outlined in my last post , Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey” and concepts like Carl Jung’s archetypes and “collective unconscious” seem to tie well into J.R.R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson’s conversation with C.S. Lewis that helped convince him to become a Christian… that the similarity between world mythologies and Christianity [...]

 For the past several years I have had a connection that has been floating around in my brain which I’ve been itching to iterate. In studying things as far flung as psychology, C.S. Lewis, Mormon theology and history, literary/mythical archetypes, world religions, and diverse world histories, these disparate parts have led me to form a pattern to the [...]

I have written two LDS History plays, one called Friends of God (about the events leading up to Joseph Smith’s martyrdom) the other called The Fading Flower (about the conflict surrounding the LDS/ RLDS schism about polygamy, especially as it related to Joseph and Emma Smith’s family). I was criticized by [...]

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The Berkeley Ward of the Oakland Stake of Zion here in California’s East Bay just celebrated 75 years since the dedication of our beautiful building. As part of the commemoration, my wife was asked to assemble and beautifully present some of the photographs and other paraphernalia related to the building’s history.
The Berkeley Ward Building is noted in [...]