Lots of Mormons in San Diego and Tucson, but I never had more than a nodding acquaintance with any of them. Hard to take seriously folks who believe that the Angel Moroni revealed to Joseph Smith the location of the golden plates and the magical stones that allowed him to translate them into bad Elizabethan.
-----Original Message-----
>From: Patrick McManus <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Oct 9, 2013 8:37 AM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: 'My Mormon'
>
>Max Gosh don't know if I have had a civilised conversation with a Mormon
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
>Behalf Of Max Richards
>Sent: 09 October 2013 02:51
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: 'My Mormon'
>
> My Mormon
>
>The seat by the window was filled
>with a senior American of large build.
>
>Another on the aisle slowly stood aside
>while I squeezed past and in. A long ride
>
>San Francisco to Boston lay ahead -
>cabin staff would keep us watered but not fed.
>
>We all had stuff to read:
>a crime novel on my left, me indeed
>
>Tolstoy on Kindle full of typos and freshness - 'The Cossacks and 'Family
>Happiness';
>
>By the window a newsprint weekly
>all about faith service and Salt Lake City.
>
>We clenched for take-off, made survey
>of the hilly city and the wide flat bay,
>
>turned inland towards the rising sun.
>We seniors dozed off one by one.
>
>Stirring I saw my Mormon had woken.
>He said we're already over Michigan.
>
>Then told me how good the hunting was
>last weekend with his Utah sons.
>
>Deer hunters are conservationists
>stabilising the numbers of these noble pests.
>
>I might have said how Tolstoy's men
>first missed a boar but got a Chechen
>
>or was it a Tartar? I get confused.
>My Mormon mentioned his family pride -
>
>on both sides ancestors trekked west
>from intolerance through great peril to blest
>
>Utah and the flourishing of their faith.
>We both liked separation of church and state.
>
>Both deplored the power of priests, with hope for reforms from the Latin
>American Pope.
>
>Religions are good while they stick to Love without dogmas handed down from
>above.
>
>I said I was reading how hard it was
>when Lutherans met Aborigines.
>
>They wanted to respect the Aranda
>and bring them in onto the verandah,
>
>school their kids and teach them hymns - and cover their disconcerting
>limbs,
>
>and lock the schoolgirls up at night.
>Learning their language to translate
>
>the Gospels showed the pastors
>Aranda knew eternity from the stars,
>
>divine powers everywhere.
>My Mormon thought time will show
>
>religions all have judeo-christian
>foundations, dispersed by migration
>
>to the ends of the earth. I should ask
>my anthropologist friend how that task
>
>of research was proceeding. We saw
>a Great Lake but not Niagara;
>
>some upstate New York wildernesses,
>the golf courses of Massachusetts,
>
>Boston's Puritan foundations overlaid
>with tribal ways and faiths less staid.
>
>I used to teach 'The Scarlet Letter'.
>America now mostly knows better
>
>and doesn't need my doggerel
>to distinguish natives from the devil.
>
>My Mormon dreams of a holiday trip
>in the South Pacific, letting rip
>
>on the long journey out
>amongst New Zealand's deer and trout
>
>and basking homeward-bound in Sydney
>pleasures and multicultural Hawaii.
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