We’re delighted to announce that Segullah’s summer issue will arrive in mailboxes across the country this week. The topic, “Gifts of the Spirit,” was inspired by our ongoing quest to find and develop the spiritual gifts which we’ve been given. In her editorial, Allyson Smith says, “I have met many people who come by patience (or faith, or discernment, or trust) with remarkable ease. To some is given one gift, to some another. going back through the list of spiritual gifts laid out in Moroni 10, I am well aware that I did not come installed with most when I was born. But the lack of them hasn’t let me off any hooks. I may be low on original patience, but that doesn’t mean I’m not under injunction to develop some. And so it goes for us all. We start where we are, with what we have.”

The issue includes personal essays by Heather Oman, Michelle Lehnardt and Tarasine Buck, where the authors find themselves in possession of spiritual gifts they didn’t know they had until they were put to the test. I’m particularly excited about our features: an article by Barbara Bishop, who views dreams as gifts of the spirit, and an interview with Marilyn Brown, who sees her role in developing Mormon writers as her own spiritual calling. The issue features amazing art by Leslie Graff. If you haven’t subscribed yet, do it now, so you can read more great stuff like this poem by Darlene Young, which reminds us how spiritual gifts are sometimes given to the people we’d least expect to receive them, and spiritual experiences often catch us unawares:

“Shepherds”

by Darlene Young

Don’t tell me about rose-cheeked Arcadian youth
gathering daisies on a hillside
piping tunes to their cloud-fluffy sheep
under the stars.

No, these were foul-smelling, lusty
men with dirty necks, greasy hands,
snorting, arguing, joke-telling, nose-picking
men—one wearing stolen
sandals (although I admit he felt
guilty about it)—gambling on who
had the best aim as they chucked rocks
at a nearby lizard.

You talk about salt of the earth—
these men were salty, alright
downright ornery, some of them,
fighting sometimes and yelling
at their wives when they were home,
which wasn’t often.

Yeah, I’ll grant you Dan
was an innocent
and Dave had some noble moments
and none of them was really evil
but they all had dirty fingernails
of one kind or another
when the light came—

yes, it came.
But don’t take away that moment just before—
flies whining over the sheep dung
and Jake and Zeke having a
spitting contest—
that’s the key moment, you see,
in all their grimy glory;
it has to be

because the light came to me too,
Alleluia.

Followed, quite possibly, by a smack upside my head.  Or a swift kick in the heinie.  Both of them are warranted.

Last week, at the behest of an old friend for some photos, I went through a box of high school stuff that has been sitting in my parents’ basement since, well, high school.  I was amazed at what I found, at what I had saved, and wondering how I knew I would want these things later.  I found pictures of old friends from elementary school that made me stare, letters to old friends that made me crack up, and love letters from an old boyfriend that made me blush.  And, of course, there were my journals.

I picked up one journal that spanned the summer of 1993 to the summer of 1995.  Two tumultuous years of my young adulthood, fraught with all of the expected angst of a person who is desperately trying to figure life out, to make good decisions, and navigate relationships.  And as I sat up well into the night, reading about these two years and all my forgotten drama, I just wanted to shout, “Enough already!  All this whining is giving me a headache!”

And it was whiny.  Wow was it whiny.  But apparently I knew it as whiny, and I defended it, saying that I only write when I feel whiny, because then the writing helps get the whiny out of my system, and that my life isn’t really as messed up as it seems in my journal, but I just write when I’m stressed and feel out of control, and that tends to happen when I was dating somebody, so really, my old journals sound like I’m schizophrenic and obsessed with boys.

Which, I suppose describes most teenagers.  But, I digress….

Like I said, I stayed up late into the night reading that journal. I was fascinated.  It was amazing the things I had forgotten, things I’m sure at the time I thought I would remember forever.  There were names of people I didn’t remember, couldn’t recall, people who had entered my life, influenced it, and then left.  There were events I recorded that I couldn’t remember participating in, conversations I don’t remember having.  My favorite, though, were my descriptions of relationships, and the transparencies obvious to me now that were much too opaque to me then.

Let’s just say if I had seen the movie, “He’s just not that into you”, that would have explained a lot.

Anyway, I’m wondering if other people keep journals like this, and if they mean something to you after the fact.  After my husband’s grandmother died, I had a chance to peruse some of her journals, and it was, again, fascinating to see glimpses of a woman I hardly knew.  I found myself wishing she had written more, just so I could see her life better.

However, reading it felt a little strange.  Intimate, like I was violating some part of her privacy, even though she was no longer on the earth.  I suppose all journals feel like that.

So tell me, do you keep a journal?  Why, or why not?   I know there is a lot of guilt associated with not keeping a journal–is it because a prophet told us to, and if we don’t do what the prophet tells us to do, we feel guilty?  Is journaling something that is hard for you to do, or something that is easy, natural, and, if you’re like me, necessary for your sanity?  Do you journal regularly, or sporadically, when the urge strikes?

If you do keep a journal, what kinds of things do you write about?  I know one friend who described the weather at the top of every entry in his journal.  I couldn’t ever figure out why he did that, especially since he lived in Boston at the time.  Seems to me there would be only one thing to report:

Weather=cold.

Call me crazy, but I find schizophrenic relationships much more entertaining.

Two years ago when Segullah made its debut I fielded lots of questions. The most frequent was this: Why a new journal?

My answer: Because Mormon women need an independent forum that maintains a faithful perspective.

“Independent forum” rarely caused any hang-ups. “Faithful perspective” was a speed bump for some (and that’s a topic for another post). But others moved right along to the “women” part. Aren’t male perspectives just as valuable? some of them asked.

Of course, of course. I had radical feminist leanings in college, but I’ve far outgrown the deluded belief that men are, basically, chumps. I believe that the greatest heights of humanity come from the union of male and female, in intimate pairs and in larger communities. And I’d love to see a faith-promoting journal of personal writings by LDS men and women. For that matter, I’d love to see one for men only. But those are someone else’s projects. Mine, as editor of Segullah, is fostering the female voice. (read the rest).

2008 has been an exciting year on Mount Segullah. We recently published our summer issue, which features prose and poetry contest honorees. In December we’ll publish our tenth issue since our 2005 debut. Our subscriber base is steadily growing, and we’re hearing from some great new voices. You can subscribe here, view the archive here, and find our submission guidelines here. The deadline for our 2008 literary contests is December 31, so get writing!

We’re also excited about the recent release of our staff anthology, The Mother in Me: Real-world Reflections on Growing Into Motherhood , published by Deseret Book. (To my knowledge, this release marked the first appearance of the word “nipple” in mainstream LDS literature.) We blushed over Margaret Young’s glowing endorsement], and we’re looking forward to reviews around the bloggernacle. And hey–we want you to come to our book release party!

Saturday October 18, 2-4 p.m

Deseret Book at the University Mall in Orem, UT

You can hear more about the book in my interview with Doug Wright, which will be broadcast on KSL radio (SLC, 1160 AM), Sunday October 12 from 9-9:30 a.m.

I suppose that’s enough shameless self-promotion for now, but we’ll soon be back with more.  My thanks to Stephen for creating this round table (vanity mirror?)–Segullah is pleased to be part of it.