“Fundamentalist”
I haven’t heard from her in years— and even then only to decline invitations to my daughters’ weddings but I’m willing to listen. She begins with her heart, her email brimming with testimony— God, Christ, forgiveness, the Book of Mormon but as she continues paragraph after paragraph wrests and whips what’s “of utmost importance” to her bands of scripture fuse with harsh decrees a painful forcing push, a mind-lock hammering my faith— Mormonism, healing blessing after a confusing childhood— a religion she declares to be in an “apostate condition,” “moving closer to Babylon” without “fidelity to God,” “no closer to […]
“Aftermath”
I object mostly to the lack of love accompanied by professions of love, those honey-coated lozenges of turpentine: “what I wrote was the truth” and “I wasn’t attacking anyone’s beliefs.” I seek opinions widely— some temporarily satisfy some don’t take my bait one asks me about myself. The desire to be right claws its way up my spine like a frantic crab. And then what? I remember her surety at her grandmother’s funeral decades earlier, uttering similar phrases but urging faith. I glimpse a patchwork of images— her tall white outline in the temple my first time through, the spray […]
