Thresholds of Eternity: Poetry and the Temple with Darlene Young

About this episode

As a lover of poetry, I was especially excited to bring Darlene Young on for a conversation about two passions close to my heart. One day, I was struck by the realization that poetry and the temple feel deeply similar to me. Both feel like crossing a threshold — moving from the concrete into the abstract, the mundane into the sacred, mortality into eternity. Darlene has an extraordinary gift for capturing these realities in her poetry and drawing readers into the space where the two meet. In this conversation, we explore the possibility of heaven in the here and now — in ordinary life — as well as how approaching the temple the way we might approach poetry can open us more fully to the gift being offered there. We talk about progression, yearning, and what Eve might teach us about navigating the tension between hungering for more while also learning to trust in our inherent wholeness. Like poetry, the temple can feel deeply open-ended. In a mind-driven culture that often seeks safety in definitive answers, what might it look like to develop the capacity to sit within that openness, allow it to work on us, and begin learning not only with our minds, but also with our bodies and he