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Recent Posts
- Psaltery & Lyre’s New Site
- 123 Psaltery & Lyre: “Agricola Dreams of Flying” by J. Rose Lara
- 122 Psaltery & Lyre: “Communion: a love poem (a villanelle)” by Rachel Bollinger
- Book Review: Philip Metres’s Sand Opera
- 121 Psaltery & Lyre: Rachael Matthews, “Horsehead Nebula”
- Book Review: Monica Ong’s Silent Anatomies
- 120 Psaltery & Lyre: Rachael Matthews, “Return, pt. III” and “Gaia”
- Book Review: Claudia Rankine’s Don’t Let Me Be Lonely
- Book Review: Matthea Harvey, If the Tabloids Are True What Are You?
- Book Review: LoterÃa Cards and Fortune Poems: A Book of Lives
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Tag Cloud
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Latest Headlines
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Unglorifying Motherhood
Posted on May 8, 2014 | 18 CommentsApril showers are over and May flowers are starting to bloom. This beautiful time of year has many people reflecting on the gratitude they feel for their many blessings in life. It is only appropriate, then, that we show this gratitude by celebrating […] -
96 Psaltery & Lyre: Dayna Patterson, “New Moon”
Posted on May 8, 2014 | 3 Comments"Mother, You are new moon / Reveal your glorious face / Give us Mother-knowledge soon . . ." -
95 Psaltery & Lyre: Jonathon Penny, “The Lord’s Prayer”
Posted on May 1, 2014 | No Comments"Thy Kingdom come when it's time and everything, and not before or after, upon which score we'll just have to trust thee, not knowing the hour or the day . . ." -
94 Psaltery & Lyre: Sarah Dunster, “God Filled the Earth with Tigers”
Posted on April 24, 2014 | No Comments; ; God Filled the Earth with Tigers God filled the earth with tigers; men and beasts warring for blood. He painted them with warning signs-what scarlet spots! In God we do not doubt; God filled the earth with tigers. The Father blessed his […] -
93 Psaltery & Lyre: Jonathon Penny, “God is Great”
Posted on April 17, 2014 | 1 Comment"He / Hears and will consider prayers and tears, will / Weigh wildest hope and wilder worry in His palms / Will bear our heaviest burdens in His arms . . ." -
92 Psaltery & Lyre: Deja Earley, “Interfaith Dialogue”
Posted on April 10, 2014 | No Comments"I punish you with silence. / The roads are empty and the silence / radiates out from our car as we drive . . ." -
91 Psaltery & Lyre: Jonathon Penny, “Christology”
Posted on April 3, 2014 | 9 Comments"What if he were shepherd under guise, / The sleek and subtle mover of the worlds? / And moved among the worlds in our round world / In weird habiliments and forms unproud, / The gift and giver of the flaming word . . ." -
Equality is not a Feeling, 23.0
Posted on April 2, 2014 | 7 CommentsToday’s Equality is not a Feeling post illustrates the gender of the people involved in church discipline processes. For the uninitiated, there are two levels of church discipline processes: one that occurs at the ward level and another that occurs at the stake […] -
90 Psaltery & Lyre: John McDermott, “Nothing to Prove”
Posted on March 27, 2014 | No Comments"Which king brought myrrh to him, / in Bethlehem, how did he know / dull pain would be a gift / fit for a child thirty-three years / away from the waiting / cross?" -
Equality is not a Feeling, 22.0
Posted on March 26, 2014 | 3 CommentsToday’s Equality is not a Feeling post focuses on the gender of the Commissioner of Education for the entire Church Educational System, which serves approximately 700,000 students in 146 countries in a wide range of elementary, secondary, and post-secondary institutions, as well as the church […] -
Equality is not a Feeling, 21.0
Posted on March 19, 2014 | 32 CommentsToday’s Equality is not a Feeling post is a continuation of last week’s, which showed gender breakdown of the Church Board of Education. The Boards of Trustees of BYU-Provo, BYU-Idaho, BYU-Hawaii, and LDS Business College are the same as the Church Board of Education, […] -
On worshipping how, where, or what we may
Posted on March 13, 2014 | 7 CommentsToday’s guest post is a talk given recently by Emily Davis Harris. Recently there has been another push by the church hierarchy to its members to better know the Articles of Faith; first, for the individual, and second, to be able to share one’s beliefs. […] -
Equality is Not a Feeling, 20.0
Posted on March 12, 2014 | 1 CommentToday’s installment in the series illustrates the gender of the members of the Church Board of Education. From what I was able to dig up from a wikipedia entry and miscellaneous other webpages from previous boards, it looks like the board is comprised of […] -
Heber J. Grant, Beer and Sexual Morality
Posted on March 10, 2014 | 31 Commentsby Greg N. I like reading comments on the bloggernacle. Especially when the discussion gets into “heated” territory. With popcorn and drink in hand, I was enjoying the semi-intense back and forth dialogue last month surrounding Tad Callister’s Morality article when I stumbled onto this […] -
Paying it Forward
Posted on March 9, 2014 | 2 Commentsby Gabrielle Crowley Like many Americans, the day-to-day grind has taken a financial toll on our household. We have had to tighten our belts and cut back on non-necessities to help make ends meet. One of those necessities was being able to fly out and […] -
89 Psaltery & Lyre: Sarah Dunster, “Xenophilia”
Posted on March 6, 2014 | No Comments"I would bend myself into an / impossible position and look out through my heels, / my head where my feet ought to be, finding / new angles of humanity." -
Equality is not a Feeling, 19.0
Posted on March 5, 2014 | 6 CommentsToday’s Equality is not a Feeling post comes to us from a Mormon mother of 11 children who compiled this list after seeing her sons get much more public recognition in church meetings than her daughters. Some of this recognition (or lack of recognition) is […] -
88 Psaltery & Lyre: John McDermott, “Sunday Discount at the Texas Car Wash”
Posted on February 27, 2014 | 4 Comments"my daughter is eyeing / the bloody images on the racks of Christian t-shirts, / My God is Tougher than Nails reads one, / My Lifeguard Walks on Water declares another." -
Equality is not a Feeling, 18.0
Posted on February 26, 2014 | 4 CommentsToday’s guest post is a continuation of Equality is not a Feeling 16.0 and Equality is not a Feeling 17.0, by Laura C.–both of which depicted gender references in our LDS hymnal. Today’s post is the last in the hymnal series and shows the […] -
Equality is not a Feeling, 17.0
Posted on February 19, 2014 | 1 CommentToday’s guest post is a continuation of Equality is not a Feeling 16.0, by Laura C., and depicts references to deity (by verse) in our LDS hymnal. [For more posts in this series, click here to see the archive.] -
Equality is not a Feeling, 16.0
Posted on February 12, 2014 | 8 CommentsThe next three Equality is not a Feeling posts come to us from Laura C., who is a veteran around here. Laura did a gender study of our hymnal. Here’s how she did it: I broke the hymns down two ways: By verse […] -
Equality is not a Feeling, 15.0
Posted on February 5, 2014 | 6 CommentsToday’s post continues the same thought from last week’s by depicting the number of General Conference speakers by sex, from 1984 through 2013. ; ; How do I explain this to my daughters–or to my son–when they ask for an explanation (which they already […] -
My Take On the New Church DNA Page
Posted on February 1, 2014 | 11 CommentsAfter hundreds of thousands of archeological digs in the Americas, from the Hudson Bay to Patagonia, from Bristol Bay to the Cape of Sao Roque there is not a single civilization that could be the Nephites. -
Gender Equality and the Mormon Church: Why Progressive Mormon Men are the Problem
Posted on January 31, 2014 | 59 CommentsHere's the reason you're the problem: You benefit from all the perks of patriarchy, but you won't own it in a way that motivates others to change it. You want to smooth out its rough edges, polish it up a bit, so you're not embarrassed by it. -
Equality is not a Feeling, 14.0
Posted on January 29, 2014 | 10 CommentsToday’s Equality is not a Feeling post depicts the number of General Conference speakers, by sex, from 1984-2013. I said it last week, but I’ll say it again because it bears repeating: this is not equality. We can do better than this; […] -
Equality is not a Feeling, 13.0
Posted on January 22, 2014 | 9 CommentsToday’s post is kind of cheating, since it’s just a new visual depiction of data from the Equality is not a Feeling, 3.0 post, but this image (submitted by a Facebook friend) is so powerful, it deserves its own post. Here is the male-female […] -
Equality is not a Feeling, 12.0
Posted on January 15, 2014 | 6 CommentsThe Equality is not a Feeling, 10.0 post teased out some data about the doctrinal density of General Conference talks given by male versus female church leaders. Today’s post is an extension of that post. Using the metric described in Equality is not […] -
87 Psaltery & Lyre: Deja Earley, “Upon Attending a Yoga Class with My Husband”
Posted on January 9, 2014 | 1 Comment"We're on the floor moving like elephants, like cows, like our cats, like the very deliberate and slow." -
Equality is not a Feeling, 11.0
Posted on January 8, 2014 | 14 CommentsToday’s Equality is not a Feeling post takes a quick look at the 2014 Primary Sharing Time outline. I printed out the outline and did a count of the following issues that are relevant to this series, which focuses on gender inequality in the […] -
The Word on the Street
Posted on January 5, 2014 | 6 CommentsLast year, in “One Word,” I wrote about my family’s relatively new tradition of selecting a word for the year, an idea we borrowed from author Debbie McComber. My mom has nicely elevated the tradition by ordering each of my sisters and I vinyl […] -
86 Psaltery & Lyre: Michael Hicks, “Joseph’s Song”
Posted on December 18, 2013 | 2 Comments"I sang it once. Three hours / stacking crates in the belly of a U-Haul truck, / its snout facing dead west into a sunset / a carpenter would cut a window for." -
Equality is not a Feeling, 10.0
Posted on December 11, 2013 | 9 CommentsEquality is not a Feeling 2.0 depicted the number of minutes of General Conference addresses delivered by men as compared to those delivered by woman. As guest writer Anderson points out, the chart on Equality is not a Feeling 2.0 conceals a greater inequity: […] -
Race, Priesthood and Infallibility
Posted on December 9, 2013 | 10 CommentsSo what we have is a page that just showed up on the "official" church website a few days ago that states that we now believe that all men are equal. Do we get a cookie for showing up to the party 50 years late? -
Equality is Not a Feeling, 9.0
Posted on December 4, 2013 | 21 CommentsToday’s illustration depicts the official duties of Mormon young men and women, ages 12-18. Each group has duties and responsibilities specific to their class that are not listed here. This chart depicts the official duties and responsibilities that each group has that are […] -
85 Psaltery & Lyre: John McDermott, “The Loaves and the Fishes”
Posted on November 28, 2013 | 2 Comments"How many people / have needlessly starved since that show-stopper?" -
Equality is Not a Feeling, 8.0
Posted on November 27, 2013 | 25 CommentsThis week’s Equality is not a Feeling post illustrates the number of males and females who have access to the Church Handbook of Instruction, Volume 1. This is based on data from the following post by April on Exponent II: The Sealed Book. […] -
Ride to Church in Viejo San Juan, Puerto Rico
Posted on November 24, 2013 | 1 CommentAbout 18 months ago, I saw a call for proposals to a language conference in Puerto Rico. I have wanted to go to Puerto Rico for many years–but for sure since I taught a really cool unit on Puerto Rico as a high school […] -
Boys, Safety Patrol and the Priesthood
Posted on November 21, 2013 | 43 CommentsA couple weeks ago, four out of five of us slept through our alarms. I rushed into Stuart’s room to see how he wanted to proceed. Because Stuart gets super anxious when our routine is disrupted or altered, I was going to let […] -
84 Psaltery & Lyre: Deja Earley, “Red Rock”
Posted on November 21, 2013 | 1 Comment"I meet an oblong angel with streaming wings, / drawn on rock. Ants trek across his feet." -
Equality is Not a Feeling, 7.0
Posted on November 20, 2013 | 4 CommentsToday’s Equality is not a Feeling post is a depiction of the number of General Conference speakers, by gender, from 1984-2013. Four women spoke in April 1984, when I was 11. Not surprisingly, I don’t remember that at all (again, I was 11). […] -
Book of Mormon Heroines for Our Daughters
Posted on November 19, 2013 | 3 CommentsHi, I’m Stephen Carter, a writer and stay-at-home dad raising two teenage sons and a four-year-old daughter. I like to read stories to my little girl, and I’m constantly on the lookout for books with strong female protagonists so that she can explore the many […] -
Ride to Sacred Places in Nigeria
Posted on November 17, 2013 | No CommentsToday’s Ride to Church comes to us from Valerie, a West Texas gal married to a Nigerian man. Valerie and her husband and their son traveled to Nigeria last year to visit his family. -
Finding My Path to Motherhood
Posted on November 15, 2013 | 8 Comments–by Ginger C. Hanson, PhD As a genXer, growing up in an active LDS family, I struggled with the seemingly contradictory messages I heard about the role of women in society. My parents and church leaders encouraged me to pursue an education. The messages I […] -
83 Psaltery & Lyre: Dayna Patterson, “The Encounter”
Posted on November 14, 2013 | 3 Comments"The early light / makes mini suns in her curious eyes. / Wind rustles through her clever coat. / Then she is gone. . . ." -
Equality is Not a Feeling, 6.0
Posted on November 13, 2013 | 38 CommentsThis week’s “Equality is not a Feeling” post is an illustration of the number of times the phrase “Heavenly X” or “X in Heaven” has appeared in any conference address since 1851 according to corpus.byu.edu. You’ll notice the difference between X=”Father” and X=”Mother” is 9,847 […] -
Ride to a Sacred Grove
Posted on November 10, 2013 | 2 CommentsFrom Terry I must have watched The First Vision (that movie staple of 1970’s and 80’s era baptismal services) dozens of times. Joseph Smith, seeking for something more than he could find in the religions of his day, ventures into the sacred grove alone. Once […] -
82 Psaltery & Lyre: Kayla Haas, “Winter of 1997, Missouri”
Posted on November 7, 2013 | 1 Comment"She stares at marble / eyes, the deer gazing / beyond her maybe seeing Van / Gogh's Starry Night / upside down from the bed / of a pickup truck . . . " -
Equality is not a Feeling, 5.0
Posted on November 6, 2013 | 29 Comments–From Laura C. This week’s “Equality is not a Feeling” post is an illustration of the people needed–according to the Church Handbook of Instructions (Volume 1, Section 9)–in order to establish official church units (e.g., branches, wards, stakes). So, I know this might not really […] -
Planning for Now, Not a Maybe
Posted on November 4, 2013 | 26 CommentsNaomi Watkins, a former middle school English teacher, earned a B.A. in English education from Brigham Young University, a M.Ed. in language and literacy from Arizona State University, and a Ph.D. in teaching and learning with a literacy emphasis from the University of Utah. When […] -
Local LDS member joins movement, challenges gender roles in church
Posted on November 3, 2013 | 53 Comments[Today’s post came out in my local newspaper. The full article can be seen here, but I think you have to have a paid subscription to see it, so I’m archiving it here. Huge thanks to Christine Broussard and the Daily Sentinel for […] -
Ride to the Ecuador Guayaquil Temple
Posted on November 3, 2013 | 2 CommentsToday’s post comes to us from Synneve, a veteran Ride to Church submitter (see here and here): I spent two weeks this summer in Cuenca, Ecuador volunteering at orphanages with Orphanage Support Services Organization (OSSO), which is based in Rexburg, Idaho. This was my second […] -
81 Psaltery & Lyre: M. Brett Gaffney, Two Poems
Posted on October 30, 2013 | No Comments"Leaves / like sloughed skin / beneath\her feet. / She walks faster." -
Equality is not a Feeling, 4.0
Posted on October 30, 2013 | 12 CommentsAnother illustration of a way to measure (in)equality in the Mormon church (for other measurements, see here, here, and here). Today we’re looking at male-female faculty representation in higher education in general (degree-granting institutions, in the U.S.) versus male-female faculty representation at BYU. […] -
Does it Get Better?
Posted on October 28, 2013 | 15 CommentsToday’s guest post comes to us from Brad Jones. Heather’s post the other day on the allocation of time between men and women is a stark portrayal of one form of gender inequality in the Church. Without question, women speak less frequently then men in […] -
Ride to Priesthood Session with Ordain Women
Posted on October 27, 2013 | 4 CommentsA couple weeks ago, I flew to Salt Lake City to attend the all-male priesthood session of the General Conference of my church. For the record, plenty of Mormons fly to SLC to attend General Conference. It’s kind of like taking a hajj […] -
80 Psaltery & Lyre: Deja Earley, “And I Remember He’s My Father”
Posted on October 24, 2013 | 1 Comment"I'm Mormon, and as such, long / to scrub babies in sinks, / deliver vegetable casseroles to wakes, / find a husband willing to unclog drains." -
LDS Men, Please Consider This
Posted on October 23, 2013 | 37 Comments"The end goal is the diffusion of any and all anger, frustration, judgement, or ill will toward the women who seem to be genuinely struggling with, or wounded by, this topic. The goal is to engender understanding, compassion, and love for our fellow sisters (and brothers) who are, like all of us, doing our very best to prayerfully follow our conscience--and ultimately our Savior." -
Equality is not a Feeling, 3.0
Posted on October 23, 2013 | 10 CommentsHere’s another installment in my series, Equality is not a Feeling–in which I am trying to illustrate, visually, numerous ways in which (in)equality in the Mormon church can be measured. This one is similar to the first one (Equality is not a Feeling 1.0), […] -
Eshet Chayil
Posted on October 22, 2013 | 3 CommentsEarlier this year, I read Rachel Held Evans’s book A Year of Biblical Womanhood and hosted a Mormon Stories Book Club podcast with Rachel, who is fabulous. Rachel is an evangelical Christian blogger, author, and speaker whose expansive and inclusive worldview I appreciate immensely–especially […] -
An Economic Perspective on Female Ordination
Posted on October 21, 2013 | 7 CommentsToday’s guest post is by S. Mark Barnes, an attorney and a university law and economics instructor. He served a mission in Fukuoka, Japan. He comes from Mormon feminist stock, and is a committed supporter of Ordain Women. He has a profile on Ordain Women. […]