In Jacob we read eight times the Lord lamented that it grieved him to lose the branches of his vineyard. Surely it grieves him to lose those who have left the Church today. There are no studies necessary to tell us we are missing family members and old friends. Some left for good reasons—to preserve a family, for instance. But some left with little understanding of the gospel. They know what they don’t like but they don’t know what they are leaving.
The artwork of Hildebrando de Melo rises from Angola itself—from the valleys near Huambo where he was born, through the urban streets of Luanda where he lives with his wife and children, amid the dynamism of one of the world’s most expensive cities, between the sounds of Portuguese and tribal Bantu languages, in the art and artifacts created by centuries of Africans, from the history of his ancestral tribal kingdom of Bailundo, with the political fallout in a country emerging from decades of brutality and war nearly incomprehensible to a foreigner and the convoluted legacies of racism, slavery, colonialism, liberation, interventionist politics, poverty, riches, and injustice, with the artist’s own history, his religious probing, the nation’s budding contemporary art scene, the artist’s global travels—and his attempts to reconcile and personify all of it.
Karen Kelsay’s Of Omens that Flitter delivers on the promise that lyric poetry has made since at least the nineteenth century to let readers overhear the musings of a thoughtful, deep-feeling person as she reflects…
For the past decade-plus, Jonathan A. Stapley (b. 1976) has authored or co-authored a series of peer-reviewed article-length essays treating various aspects of LDS priesthood ritual (expressions of what he defines as liturgy). Though Stapley’s academic background is in science (he holds a PhD in food science from Purdue University), his interests have gradually shifted from developing bio-renewable natural sweeteners to tracing the serpentine contours of LDS liturgical history. This, his first book, represents an expansion of Stapley’s scholarly interests as well as a significant new contribution to LDS history.
The train, where I do most of my reading these days, can actually be a hard place to read. It can be difficult for the characters in a book to compete with the characters I…
The day the head gasket blew in the California desert, it was late summer, 1987—and therefore, stiflingly hot. The painter’s van was hooked to a travel trailer, living quarters for my foster brother Karl, his…
She is willful. She is in the other room. She is “the feminine / present subjunctive.” She is “tessellating.” She is “throneless, / wanders.” She is “queen of heaven.” She is a “Heavenly Hausfrau.” She is “Medusa in the kingdom.” She is the “Pillar of Womanhood.” She is “executrix.” She is a “mahogany” woman. She is “the Holy Soul.” She is.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints continues to deal with its past racial teachings. For 126 years, African American men were denied priesthood ordination, while both men and woman of African descent were…
Take me back
before the broken tablets,
back to the secrets of winds
unfurled, constellations rising
We talk often
of the Son’s surrender
His long suffering, His forever
atoning—the shards