Dear Sunstone Subscriber, We love providing you with the best of Mormon thought and experience in Sunstone magazine, and now we’re excited to make our content even easier for you to enjoy. In this world where multitasking is almost as essential as breathing, the idea of sitting in a chair and focusing your eyes, hands, …
Category: Issue 186
Iron
By Stephen Carter The first Book of Mormon metaphor my childhood brain latched onto was the rod of iron in Lehi’s Dream. I often contemplated a painting of it in an illustrated scripture book I had, fascinated by the drama of it: the struggling bodies, the miasmic landscape, the shimmering tree—all connected by …
Kenosis
from the Greek meaning “self-emptying” By Anita Tanner “If you could turn your heart into a cowstall, Christ would be born again on earth.” —Angelius Silestus Old wood, manure, and cattle urine in milky darkness— only one bare bulb at the far end of the barn, each stall cave-dark, heavy brown where cows …
Former Mormons Catechize their Kids
By Dayna Patterson In the beginning was— Chaos. Cyclone. Sky. In the beginning was— Death. Hunger. The Void. A thought. A Word. Matter unorganized. A Big Bang. An expanding universe. Heavy elements formed in supernovan heat. A lotus on a lake of milk. A mass of water humming Nun. Fire of Muspell and ice …
Poems by L. N. Allen
Spaces Needed in the 21st Century a space between writing letters and pressing Send between finishing an entrée and ordering dessert between falling in love and having sex between desiring and acquiring between growing older and being old between sitting quietly and praying . . . even better, a double space, an interval, a biblical selah. …
The Broken Chord
By Dana Haight Cattani I’ve heard there was a secret chord That David played and it pleased the Lord But you don’t really care for music, do ya? It goes like this The fourth, the fifth The minor fall, the major lift The baffled king composing Hallelujah —Leonard Cohen “Hallelujah” Today …
Imagining Changes that Benefit Borderlanders
By D. Jeff Burton In this column I share some edited communications I had with a fellow Borderlander, “Ron,” (names and details changed) who lives in northern Utah and works in education. Ron: I count myself mostly still in the Borderlands, attending and participating only when I feel the need, but I miss …
Pentecost
By Robert A. Rees On a recent trip to Peru for the Liahona Children’s Foundation, I was asked to address the Peruvian Congress on the subject of children’s malnutrition. Although I don’t speak Spanish, my colleague from the Foundation, Alberto Puertas, is Peruvian and beautifully bilingual, and so the members of the Congress heard …
Walking Into the Forest
By Rev. Patty Willis During my early years, our family lived where there were few to no members of the Mormon Church. So my siblings and I attended services conducted by my father in our living room, my mother playing the piano and teaching us Primary songs. When I was eight years old, …
There Is U-235 in My Soul Today
By Karen Rosenbaum In early 1951 the U.S. government began testing atomic bombs on Frenchman Flat, about 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas and about 90 miles northwest of the U.S. Bureau of Mines station in Boulder City, where we lived and where my metallurgist father researched uranium. This is why, very early one …