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  • Are We Not All Beggars?

    BY MICHELLE FORSTROM For behold, are we not all beggars? Do we not all depend upon the same Being, even God, for all the substance which we have, for both food and raiment, and for gold, and for silver, and for all the riches which we have of every kind? (Mosiah 4.19) The first time…

  • Breaths of Life

    BY EMILY CLUFF “Don’t forget your breathing.” The chipper voice is what I would expect from someone who chose to teach a yoga class at 7:00 in the morning. In fact, everything about my instructor fits the stereotype down to a T. Long brown ponytail, inhuman flexibility, cute stretchy pants, and relentless positive energy at…

  • Faith, Fear, and Our Forefathers

    BY LISA CHRISTENSEN In 1838, a band of over 200 mobsters charged into Haun’s Mill, Missouri, a small community of the fledgling Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Then-Governor Lilburn W. Boggs had recently issued a kill order against any member of the church, and the mob was only too happy to comply. Over…

  • Of Names

    BY ELIZA BROADBENT I go by my middle name. Consequently, I spent the first day of each class throughout my academic life timidly interrupting the rapid-fire of name listing to say that I actually go by a completely different name than the one on your roster, which is actually my middle name, which, yes, I’m…

  • Prayer Pennies 

    BY KALLI ABBOTT I turned the penny over a couple times in my hand before putting it in the back of my pink-and-gold sneaker. The penny was darkened from age, and I could see the “1972” next to Lincoln’s head. Maybe it had been in the shoe of another ten-year-old girl at some point. I…

  • Until the WristwatchIs Taken from the Wrist

    Five years before my grandpa died, an employee at theOregon Department of Fish and Wildlife crashed theirtanker truck of approximately 11,000 live Chinook salmoninto a power pole in Eugene, Oregon. When the truck rolled,and the shocked, slippery cargo flew into the Mackenzie RiverHighway—their permanently astonished expressions, for once,appropriate to the occasion—the interstate was sheathed in…