To the Mountain
One Mormon Woman's Search for Spirit
-
- $19.99
-
- $19.99
Publisher Description
Written by an award-winning writer, this spiritual memoir is distinguished by the author’s Mormonism and literary prose. In a series of thought-provoking, personal essays, Phyllis Barber provides an engaging account of how she left her original Mormon faith and eventually returned to it decades later. Her journey begins in the 1990s. In search of spiritual healing and a deeper understanding of the divine, she travels widely and participates with people of many different persuasions, including Southern Baptists; Tibetan Buddhist monks in Tibet and North India; shamans in Peru and Ecuador; goddess worshipers in the Yucatan; and members of mega-church congregations, an Islamic society, and Gurdjieff study groups. Her 20-year hiatus from Mormonism transforms her in powerful ways. A much different human being when she decides to return to her original religion, her clarity and unflinching honesty will encourage others to continue with their own personal odysseys.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Barber (How I Got Cultured), a lyrical writer who taught for many years in the Vermont College of Fine Arts M.F.A. program, followed the rules of her Latter-day Saint childhood: attended Sunday School, matriculated at Brigham Young, married a nice boy there, and raised four sons with him. But the marriage ends when the kids are grown, largely because of differing opinions about religion. Thus Barber, in middle age, is launched on a quest to discover what it means "to be spiritual, to be connected." She visits a mosque, hangs out with a Peruvian shaman, and investigates Buddhism, but after a decade away from the LDS church, she discovers that she is held to Mormonism by memory, by faith, by childhood formation, and concludes that she can live with Mormonism's "flaws" and "prejudices." Along the way she has a disastrous love affair, remarries, divorces again, and then reconciles with her second husband, a Jewish man who tells her she is happier when attending Mormon services. Throughout, the prose is lovely; Barber speaks of falling off the "precipice of knowing" and of her faith changing shape like a moon. Spiritual pilgrims of many stripes will find this book good company.
