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A theme

Zion

Zion is the Lord’s own name for a city of refuge. These essays stand in its courtroom, where the same mouth can be accuser or advocate, and recover the mercy the law built for the manslayer: that righteous judgment reads seeds while unrighteous judgment harvests souls — and that judgment belongs to the wounded.

6 essays

  1. 1The City of RefugeThe strangest real estate in the law of Moses — six cities, one pursuer, a road crew, and the death that sets the runner free*
  2. 2Judge Righteous JudgmentJudge not" was never the whole sentence — on what we're commanded to judge, what we're forbidden to judge, and the surprising qualification of the only competent Judge
  3. 3Heaven Is a Place on EarthA thought exercise run to its end — why the only thing between us and heaven is the aperture of our love, what Enoch's city proved and left in escrow, the perfection commandment retranslated, Ether 12's doctrine of issued weakness, and the differences among us revealed as the deliberately incomplete kits that force the assembly of one perfect man
  4. 4Hosanna to God and the LambOn the shout that seals every temple dedication, the psalm it quotes and what hosanna actually means, the winter the Kirtland saints spent knitting themselves into one accord — and the whole playbook, laid out for any ward and stake with a dedication on the calendar
  5. 5The Last RiverA real-life parable, told to me by my friend Davin — about the Nez Perce Tribe, the salmon they raise at the last hatchery on the river, the millions they give and the fraction they receive — and what the covenant of Abraham, the allegory of the olive tree, and the promise that the last shall be first look like when they wear fins
  6. 6The Two ShamesOn the verses in Section 42 that look like shame-legislation and are actually its opposite — the containment protocol, Paul's fork between the sorrow that works repentance and the sorrow that works death, the prophet who wept before rebuking, and the covenant's stated endpoint: a people who cannot be shamed because nothing is hidden