Poem: A Simple Step

What passes for faith
Might better be described
As pretending,
Ninety-nine times 
Out of a hundred.
But the one person 
Out of that hundred
Who takes the step, 
Simple and inevitable,
Past pretending
Saves the other ninety-nine.

Poem: Liturgy

There are as many ways to stand in church 
As there are neuroses. 
You can do it with righteous gratitude like the Pharisee. 
You can do it for fear of doing something wrong, 
Or in hope of Doing Something Right. 

Faith and the Magic Loudspeaker

“The inhabitants of the moon are more of a uniform size than the inhabitants of the earth, being about 6 feet in height. They dress very much like the Quaker style. . . . They live to be very old; coming generally, near a thousand years.   This is the description of them as given by Joseph the Seer, and he could ‘See’ whatever he asked the Father in the name of Jesus to see.”
—Oliver B. Huntington, citing a revelation received by the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Joseph Smith¹

The above howler is just a drop from the fountain of weird beliefs that flow from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and that modern Mormons are so skilled at spinning when their efforts to keep them hidden fail.  If they were to explain this one away, as I’m sure they can, they still can’t spin the fact that they very literally believe that God the Father lives on the planet Kolob with his many wives, that Jesus and Lucifer were rival brothers in some pre-earthly existence, and that, as he ascended into heaven, Jesus made a side trip to North America to preach to the natives, who were none other than a lost tribe of Israel. The usual Mormon tactic when confronted with the hard-to-swallow tenets of their faith is a question they hope will be taken rhetorically, along the lines of:  "Well, now, doesn’t every religion have its own peculiar beliefs?"