This is the title of a book, a collection of essays, written by Hugh Nibley. If you are not familiar with Hugh Nibley, he was a scholar who worked in the world of the theology of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He was a professor who taught at BYU for many years and was perhaps one of these most prolific contributors to that field of scholarship. What is more curious is his background, his conscientious rejection of his family inheritance, and his deliberate searching for greater light and knowledge.

I am not a scholar and this text has been the first go around with Nibley. Yet what I find in Nibley is something of the same thing that I find in the Book of Mormon itself: the truth, deep and abiding. I’m not a reader. In fact, reading does not come easily to me. This forces me to read slowly, to internalize more deeply, to be more selective in how I use my precious time in what I choose to read and study. Yet, I can read and understand Nibley.

Taking the time to pen what I am discovering here in a blog for a “media production” company may seem a bit out of place. But it is also fair to recognize that 1) Sun Swing Media Company is no longer actively functioning as a media production house, and 2) if and when it does resume operations, it will not be an ordinary day-to-day operation.

So why Nibley? I’ve made it to near the end of an almost 600 page book of scholarly thinking and reasoning. I’ve never done this before on any subject. I’ve never even read a textbook from cover to cover. Yet here I am inhaling these writings about Zion and its coming forth, and so much related to it, knowing that it is has a purpose in defining our course for the future. I am in the last chapter on Atonement, and I find myself enraptured with the visual symbolism being connected to doctrines that are of ancient date. Music and art, these are the great manifestations of the Atonement of Christ and they are the closest reminders of Home that we can create to bring us back into His presence. They are the great manifestations of the educated mind, which mind, when properly prepared through the cleansing power of the Atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ, can freely create to elevate the human spirit.