Downwinders, meaning those people, individuals, communities that were downwind of the nuclear test site. During those years when we were testing atomic bombs above ground, when we watched them for entertainment from the roofs of our high schools, little did we know what was raining down on us, little did we know what would appear years later.

The time had come to protest with the heart, that to deny one's genealogy with the earth was to commit treason against one's soul.

My voice is born repeatedly in the fields of uncertainty.

I think about the poet Rainer Maria Rilke who said that it's the questions that move us, not the answers. As a writer, I believe that it's our task, our responsibility, to hold the mirror up to social injustices that we see and to create a prayer of beauty. The questions serve us in that capacity.

I come from a culture that embodies the need to convert others to "the truth." The Mormon Church has one of the largest missionary programs in the world. That does not interest me.

The Eyes of the Future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time.

Perhaps the Wilderness we fear is the pause between our own heartbeats, the silence that reminds us we live by grace.