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Where the Soul Hungers: One Doctor’s Journey from Atheism to Faith
Though raised as a Latter-day Saint in Utah, Samuel M. Brown was an atheist from an early age and proud of it. Yet, by his own account, God became an undeniable presence in his life. Now a faithful Latter-day Saint, this practicing research physician narrates some of the waypoints on his journey into believing and belonging. Some are dramatic—his wife’s cancer diagnosis or working in a hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic—while many are simple yet profound: being mistaken for a homeless person while a student at Harvard, growing to like little children and opera, and learning to bake cookies for others. With gentle, self-critical humor and a generous regard for those who have accompanied him on his way, Brown’s book is an offer to walk with you a while on your own journey of faith.
94 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 31, 2021
14 people are currently reading
222 people want to read
About the author
Samuel Morris Brown
7 books62 followersSamuel Morris Brown (born 1972), a medical researcher and physician, is Assistant Professor of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine and Associate in the Division of Medical Ethics and Humanities at the University of Utah and attending physician in the Shock Trauma Intensive Care Unit at Intermountain Medical Center. He investigates hidden rhythms in heart function during life-threatening infection. In his limited free time, Samuel studies and writes about the human and cultural meanings of kinship, embodiment, illness, and mortality.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 52 reviews
July 26, 2021
I love Sam Brown's perspective! I thoroughly enjoy his more academic, scholarly work, and was blown away by this one. I felt a kinship with much of the emotional journey that Sam describes (as a fellow defiant, somewhat naturally cynical, contrarian dude) and really resonated with Sam's own wrestle with authenticity and community and how to find a way to be sincere and genuine, while also striving for a better self.
The book is packed with insights and nuggets of wisdom that I'm sure I'll be thinking about and returning to for years to come. Very grateful for this book (and I'll likely be writing a longer review soon to engage more deeply with it!, so watch for that if you're so inclined).
The book is packed with insights and nuggets of wisdom that I'm sure I'll be thinking about and returning to for years to come. Very grateful for this book (and I'll likely be writing a longer review soon to engage more deeply with it!, so watch for that if you're so inclined).
June 6, 2021
Fantastic book by Sam Brown. Part memoir, part collection of devotional essays. I really enjoyed reading this book. This is probably the most accessible volume by the author, written in a style that is one part Alan Jacobs (Shaming The Devil), one part David Foster Wallace (Consider the Lobster), and one part Ensign/Liahona “Latter-Day Voices” article.
I won’t give any spoilers (this small, inexpensive volume is more than worth the minuscule price), but will mention one thing that most affected me.
I was especially touched by the essays that touched on the author’s experience with his wife’s brain tumor, and how that was such a formative/transformative experience in his life. I could really identify with him, having passed through some harrowing experiences with my wife’s Cystic Fibrosis that put her health in such decline to where she needed a double lung transplant. The experiences connected to her transplant put my life on a noticeably different course than before. I appreciated the author’s openness about his experiences and how they changed him, and it caused me to reflect on what effect my experiences have had on my own family life and discipleship.
I won’t give any spoilers (this small, inexpensive volume is more than worth the minuscule price), but will mention one thing that most affected me.
I was especially touched by the essays that touched on the author’s experience with his wife’s brain tumor, and how that was such a formative/transformative experience in his life. I could really identify with him, having passed through some harrowing experiences with my wife’s Cystic Fibrosis that put her health in such decline to where she needed a double lung transplant. The experiences connected to her transplant put my life on a noticeably different course than before. I appreciated the author’s openness about his experiences and how they changed him, and it caused me to reflect on what effect my experiences have had on my own family life and discipleship.
July 2, 2021
A group of essays, that helped me see myself differently. The authors insights are just what I needed.
April 20, 2022
This is an amazing book. While I love studying theology and scholarly works on religion, I increasingly believe that the most profound truths in religion are found through commitment and lived religious experience. Sam Brown highlights these profound truths in his reflection on the day-to-day experiences living the restored gospel. Definitely recommend. And I’ll return to this in the future.
March 11, 2022
I never tire of reading Sam Brown. Whether it is his academic work or, as in this case, in his more personal writings, he is authentic and consistently original in his insights. He is a rare gift.
July 5, 2021
I listened to this book after hearing a podcast on "All In" about his life and personal journey with his wife Kate Holbrook. His life is fascinating, and his personal lessons and discoveries after his wife's eye cancer cause you to reassess your own life and relationships.
It is a series of essays on different topics, often turning philosophical, which always makes you think.
It is a series of essays on different topics, often turning philosophical, which always makes you think.
September 25, 2022
This is a story about growing faith. Brown shares vulnerable insights and experiences that help describe his faith journey in a way that could be helpful to others who have questions about identity, authenticity, and community. Here are some of my favorite quotes:
"We'd focused on the kidney infection and missed the subtler but far more important problem of the heart valve. That lesson has stayed with me, both in medicine and in my scholarly work on religious history. I've come to realize that many of the problems we struggle with are due to selective blindness (p. 2)."
"With God safely banished to a remote corner of the universe, it became easier to maintain that the earthly material aspects of existence could stand entirely on their own... It is fiction to imagine that we need nothing other than mere physical matter to live in and make sense of the world (p. 3)."
"We have the idea that selves must be insulated from communities through an 'authentic' individualism. We in the West are prone to talk about personal authenticity and to assume the worst of institutions. Many moderns worry that individuals will drown in community and that we are the only ones who can possibly know ourselves (p. 4)."
"A third estrangement attempts to separate reason from God and humanity, to 'detach' thinking from its contexts in human life and spiritual aspiration (p. 4)."
"The aversion to cruelty and the love of marginalized people is in many respects the legacy of Jesus Christ. It was Jesus who loved above all others the poor, the forgotten, the people who are at the bottom of traditional power relationships (p. 5)."
"I'm no great person. But my soul is hungry for the presence of God, and my path through life may be familiar to others who are similarly torn (p. 5)."
"Several of these essays have grown in the soil of my recently broken heart. Even those that fail to mention the family health crisis that jolted me from the numbly busy life of a physician scientist have been shaped by that calamity. Love and vulnerability are touchstones of human beauty, and they can come into rare clarity when life is threatened (p. 5)."
"Light and grace have gained easier access to my broken heart than to my comfortably proud one. My heart and mind have been remade in tragedy... Tragedy has made me willing to tear off my blinders (p. 6)."
"I also find in the restored gospel the promise that we can be made whole as individuals within the self-giving love of sacred relation (p. 7)."
"God does not ask us that we sacrifice our ability to wonder and probe and question. God asks for our sincere love and our willingness to spread that renewing love to the world (p. 10)."
"I believe the way I breathe. I believe with my whole hungry soul. I haven't always believed, and I don't believe everything. I'm natively a skeptic (p. 10)."
"This scintillation in the company of the Saints is the great treasure of my life. This life in the Restoration is the truest thing I know (p. 11)."
"The scandal of my atheism filled me with pride (p. 16)."
"Faith involves a great deal of work. Faith always does (p. 16)."
"When I abandoned atheism, I realized that I could choose to see God in and through the world. And once I allowed that possibility, it was as if the life under the ocean's surface flashed into view--the fish and whales and plants and mountains and trenches. I'd discovered a new realm (p. 17)."
"This capacity to see is precisely the gift that the prophets and prophetesses bring to us from the presence of God. They can see things that aren't there. It might be the remote past or the distant future (p. 18)."
"The framing is often more important than the question... Religion isn't free from framing errors (p. 19)."
"Among other important reasons, the Church exists to bring heaven and earth together and to build family communities that extend beyond biology (p. 21)."
"The capacity to admit when we are wrong is a crucial trait in religion and science... When I hear President Uchtdorf encourage us to 'doubt our doubts,' he is in part urging on us the patient humility that is required for all learning (p. 21)."
"We belong to each other (p. 23)."
"I needed to feel deep down in my soul that whether we like it or not, we depend on each other. This dependence is a fixed fact about the universe (p. 23)."
"Recognizing that others' burdens were my burdens too allowed me to see that if they needed something from me, then I could rise to the occasion. I couldn't live in my own little world because I had to live in the real one, where people depend on each other... At a practical level, this awareness of human interdependence slowly began to shape my behaviors (p. 23)."
"I am not the smartest or best person in the room (p. 24)."
"We must discover in others what is beautiful and gracious and wise. In any room, we will encounter people who are better than we are (p. 25)."
"I realized... that faith was about more than mastering the doctrines of the Restoration. Faith was about learning to love. I would need to love well and often. I began to spend time with our elderly neighbors, cooked dinner for strangers, and started baking cookies for church. I tried to listen to the stories people tell and compliment them more (p. 25)."
"The gospel tells us that we are nothing without other people and that the measure of our lives is how richly we have loved... In love I find myself educated and reshaped. In love I find myself enlightened... The work of loving, well and often, is necessary to faith and knowledge (p. 26)."
"We need to be able to see both what is temporary and physical and what is eternal and spiritual (p. 28)."
"The interdependence of temporal and spiritual is one of the defining attributes of the restored gospel (p. 29)."
"My friendships within Boston's homeless community helped to define me in that period of change (p. 31)."
"I searched the throng for some proof that I belonged (p. 35)."
"Those who looked past me had carefully secured identities--they were students, police officers, salespeople, and professional academics. Their threat to my significance felt painfully real. I was bereft of the supports of identity I had come to require... We too often depend on our position, our access to our exercise of power to place us in the world. Many of us have spent years, if not decades, building careers to keep us safe and secure... Wherever and whoever we are, we are called to follow Jesus into the quiet mingling among the vulnerable and forgotten, sharing their identity. This is hard work, but it belongs to God (p. 37)."
"Godliness means loving those who suffer (p. 38)."
"Jesus's love isn't just in the heart, it's also in the mind. This love teaches us how the world works, and it is both glorious and sad (p. 38)."
"Being a good person means loving other people, which in turn means loving Jesus... what if the hymn is a story about Jesus and other homeless people? What if it's telling us about their shared identity, reconciling us to each other and all of us to Christ? What if we're asked to be open to true, shared identity? And what if that flowing of identity stands at the center of atonement (p. 39)?"
"I experienced my alienation as evidence that no one understood me. Communities rejected me, and I rejected them back... From my alienated perch, I was blind to the goodness of the communities in which I lived and breathed and had my being (p. 42)."
"Those blind-faith Latter-day Saints did a lot of listening to and loving of this boy who worked to defy them at every turn. That ward held our family in its bosom. I attacked and resented, and they loved in response (p. 43)."
"The enveloping rain fell from the sky in syncopated waves. I added my voice to the song the sky sang with the fabric of our tent. Spirit, world, and the bonds of friendship circled tight around my heart. We wept together in God's presence... I suspect that our shared experience of spiritual transformation had a role to play in this endurance. Those bonds are strong. They will last an eternity (p. 44)."
"I finally managed to think less about myself than I did about others. I began to taste in a consistent way the bittersweet, transformative tang of humility (p. 44)."
"My resistance of community was affecting not just my Church participation but all aspects of my life (p. 45)."
"With the needs of the vulnerable in mind, we should explore the contours of our modern cultural plight (p. 46)."
"The New Testament was... clearer that identity came through God and community (p. 48)."
"This community love with us, such troubled and troubling mortals, is the story of Atonement. Christ's life was not fully his. It was ours as well (p. 49)."
"'The key to self-esteem is looking for the good in others' (Janette Hales Beckham, p. 50)."
"Benjamin says that the meaning of his life, his identity as the king, is in service to other people and to God. He doesn't want to tell stories about his authentic self. He wants to tell stories about God and the people he serves, because they are who he is (p. 51)."
"Christ and his divine parents loved our world wo much that they sent him to consecrate and restore it (p. 52)."
"We can find the meaning and purpose of our mortal lives by looking in the mirror and expecting to see our own reflection. He would be baffled by categories and classes trumping membership in the body of Christ as the ways people make sense of each other (p. 52)."
"On my mission I was at my worst when I was concerned with my reputation as a committed and obedient proselytizer. I was at my best when I forgot myself in the sacred love of a broken hungry soul for the presence of God (p. 52)."
"Whatever happened next, we had carried God's love to one who suffered (p. 53)."
"In the middle of life, as I've stepped away from authenticity, I find myself fully committed to sincerity and genuineness... our standards for genuineness represent an alignment with truth and beauty beyond us (p. 54)."
"We are instruments in an orchestra, and whatever instrument we are, we should play to the best of our ability. No orchestra benefits from a viola pretending to be an oboe or a flute substituting for a piano... Problems of identity and community have always been a question of harmony and balance... The call to interdependent genuineness in the presence of Christ will stretch all of us across the political and social differences that would otherwise divide us (p. 55)."
"We really can't know ourselves alone; authenticity is no simple path to self-understanding... It's when I forget myself that I can see the Spirit of Christ filling the world with light and love. In that forgetfulness I find, as if by serendipity but really by grace, my soul enlarged (p. 56)."
"The greatest beauty, power, goodness, and truth available to us as mortals will always involve sneaking out from under the thumb of our self-regard. We will be blind as long as we stare into mortal mirrors. In Christ... we encounter the sacred possibility that we will discover, in our forgetting, that we have known ourselves all along (p. 57)."
"In the language of the hopeful foolishness of youth, I told God that I had done his work the night before and that it was time for him to help me. My prayer did not feel as blasphemous in my mind then as it does now to confess it (p. 61)."
"I'm a scholar and a believer: pleasure in details is part of my makeup and always has been (p. 66)."
"The wild upheaval of unexpected illness unearthed more than a surgical specimen for the pathologist's microscope. She and I discovered in the cancer's aftermath my longstanding failure as a husband to be her full partner (p. 71)."
"Not allowed to perform the formal priesthood ordinance, they brought the ritual to life in the loaves of bread they offered on the altar. They baked the Lord's presence into the world, recapitulating his work Capernaum. There, Jesus had performed his great miracle of loaves and fishes... If Jesus was the Bread of Life, those Latter-day Saint women were his bakers (p. 74)."
"That is the entire story of Christ's ministry... to discover the possibility that we broken human beings can be made whole. None of us is beyond God's powerful love (p. 86)."
"When I start to think I've encountered a Goliath in my life, I pause now and ask whether I am in fact the Goliath (p. 98)."
"The people we are prone to overlook are the most important citizens of God's kingdom (p. 103)."
"Kindness to children is not a native part of my life or personality (p. 105)."
"By the lights of authenticity, I'm an aloof intellectual who has little time for others. I'm natively impatient and more than a little blind to what is good and beautiful. This love of the strange simplicity of children feels as familiar as breathing to me now, but it's not authentic... Instead, it's the sweet fruit of spiritual practice in an orchard I had to plant and till and sweat over. I'm not dimwitted enough to claim that I am the sole or even primary reason this tree has grown and borne fruit (p. 105)."
"I have my own trivial bundle of prejudices (p. 110)."
"We're all prone to miss the point, sometimes catastrophically (p. 111)."
"In mourning with those who mourn, in being God's arms wrapped around the sufferer's shoulders, we must be filled with God's love... love may require that we work together to see clearly. We all of us have lapses of vision; grief and mental illness may especially threaten our sight (p. 118)."
"God is glad when we are smart or wise... But God cares more whether we can see with clarity and love into the broken heart of the sufferer (p. 119)."
"How much time am I willing to take to get this right? Does the fate of the sufferer matter to me (p. 120)?"
"These are the people whose stories are intertwining with ours (p. 124)."
"I'm giddy with this ring, in this temple, at this altar. It's as if we got reengaged and remarried in the space of a day. This time I am giving her my whole heart. My soul belongs to us here, as we inhabit eternity. This is my promise; this is my faithfulness (p. 126)."
"When I was a missionary, I thought fasting was a way to shout a prayer... I'm less convinced now that God needs a hearing aid. I suspect that God hears, whether we shout or whisper. Not that we shouldn't pray with passion... But sometimes we will instead need to be quiet (p. 128)."
"When we're doing religion right, we are able to open our souls to each other, often. Such vulnerability sends a spasm through my heart. For some of us... that spasm can express itself in tears (p. 134)."
"The notion of family is more expansive in our past, present, and future as Saints (p. 134)."
"I see why the scriptures teach that mortals can't tolerate the entire presence of God. The tiny little shivers of God that I find at church reduce me to wordless tears (p. 135)."
"I see Enos's choice of words as telling us a great deal about the experience of approaching God. For many of us, God feels inaccessible, like a force that we can strain toward but never touch (p. 146)."
"I am called to live between heaven and earth, and I am grateful for the call (p. 149)."
"We'd focused on the kidney infection and missed the subtler but far more important problem of the heart valve. That lesson has stayed with me, both in medicine and in my scholarly work on religious history. I've come to realize that many of the problems we struggle with are due to selective blindness (p. 2)."
"With God safely banished to a remote corner of the universe, it became easier to maintain that the earthly material aspects of existence could stand entirely on their own... It is fiction to imagine that we need nothing other than mere physical matter to live in and make sense of the world (p. 3)."
"We have the idea that selves must be insulated from communities through an 'authentic' individualism. We in the West are prone to talk about personal authenticity and to assume the worst of institutions. Many moderns worry that individuals will drown in community and that we are the only ones who can possibly know ourselves (p. 4)."
"A third estrangement attempts to separate reason from God and humanity, to 'detach' thinking from its contexts in human life and spiritual aspiration (p. 4)."
"The aversion to cruelty and the love of marginalized people is in many respects the legacy of Jesus Christ. It was Jesus who loved above all others the poor, the forgotten, the people who are at the bottom of traditional power relationships (p. 5)."
"I'm no great person. But my soul is hungry for the presence of God, and my path through life may be familiar to others who are similarly torn (p. 5)."
"Several of these essays have grown in the soil of my recently broken heart. Even those that fail to mention the family health crisis that jolted me from the numbly busy life of a physician scientist have been shaped by that calamity. Love and vulnerability are touchstones of human beauty, and they can come into rare clarity when life is threatened (p. 5)."
"Light and grace have gained easier access to my broken heart than to my comfortably proud one. My heart and mind have been remade in tragedy... Tragedy has made me willing to tear off my blinders (p. 6)."
"I also find in the restored gospel the promise that we can be made whole as individuals within the self-giving love of sacred relation (p. 7)."
"God does not ask us that we sacrifice our ability to wonder and probe and question. God asks for our sincere love and our willingness to spread that renewing love to the world (p. 10)."
"I believe the way I breathe. I believe with my whole hungry soul. I haven't always believed, and I don't believe everything. I'm natively a skeptic (p. 10)."
"This scintillation in the company of the Saints is the great treasure of my life. This life in the Restoration is the truest thing I know (p. 11)."
"The scandal of my atheism filled me with pride (p. 16)."
"Faith involves a great deal of work. Faith always does (p. 16)."
"When I abandoned atheism, I realized that I could choose to see God in and through the world. And once I allowed that possibility, it was as if the life under the ocean's surface flashed into view--the fish and whales and plants and mountains and trenches. I'd discovered a new realm (p. 17)."
"This capacity to see is precisely the gift that the prophets and prophetesses bring to us from the presence of God. They can see things that aren't there. It might be the remote past or the distant future (p. 18)."
"The framing is often more important than the question... Religion isn't free from framing errors (p. 19)."
"Among other important reasons, the Church exists to bring heaven and earth together and to build family communities that extend beyond biology (p. 21)."
"The capacity to admit when we are wrong is a crucial trait in religion and science... When I hear President Uchtdorf encourage us to 'doubt our doubts,' he is in part urging on us the patient humility that is required for all learning (p. 21)."
"We belong to each other (p. 23)."
"I needed to feel deep down in my soul that whether we like it or not, we depend on each other. This dependence is a fixed fact about the universe (p. 23)."
"Recognizing that others' burdens were my burdens too allowed me to see that if they needed something from me, then I could rise to the occasion. I couldn't live in my own little world because I had to live in the real one, where people depend on each other... At a practical level, this awareness of human interdependence slowly began to shape my behaviors (p. 23)."
"I am not the smartest or best person in the room (p. 24)."
"We must discover in others what is beautiful and gracious and wise. In any room, we will encounter people who are better than we are (p. 25)."
"I realized... that faith was about more than mastering the doctrines of the Restoration. Faith was about learning to love. I would need to love well and often. I began to spend time with our elderly neighbors, cooked dinner for strangers, and started baking cookies for church. I tried to listen to the stories people tell and compliment them more (p. 25)."
"The gospel tells us that we are nothing without other people and that the measure of our lives is how richly we have loved... In love I find myself educated and reshaped. In love I find myself enlightened... The work of loving, well and often, is necessary to faith and knowledge (p. 26)."
"We need to be able to see both what is temporary and physical and what is eternal and spiritual (p. 28)."
"The interdependence of temporal and spiritual is one of the defining attributes of the restored gospel (p. 29)."
"My friendships within Boston's homeless community helped to define me in that period of change (p. 31)."
"I searched the throng for some proof that I belonged (p. 35)."
"Those who looked past me had carefully secured identities--they were students, police officers, salespeople, and professional academics. Their threat to my significance felt painfully real. I was bereft of the supports of identity I had come to require... We too often depend on our position, our access to our exercise of power to place us in the world. Many of us have spent years, if not decades, building careers to keep us safe and secure... Wherever and whoever we are, we are called to follow Jesus into the quiet mingling among the vulnerable and forgotten, sharing their identity. This is hard work, but it belongs to God (p. 37)."
"Godliness means loving those who suffer (p. 38)."
"Jesus's love isn't just in the heart, it's also in the mind. This love teaches us how the world works, and it is both glorious and sad (p. 38)."
"Being a good person means loving other people, which in turn means loving Jesus... what if the hymn is a story about Jesus and other homeless people? What if it's telling us about their shared identity, reconciling us to each other and all of us to Christ? What if we're asked to be open to true, shared identity? And what if that flowing of identity stands at the center of atonement (p. 39)?"
"I experienced my alienation as evidence that no one understood me. Communities rejected me, and I rejected them back... From my alienated perch, I was blind to the goodness of the communities in which I lived and breathed and had my being (p. 42)."
"Those blind-faith Latter-day Saints did a lot of listening to and loving of this boy who worked to defy them at every turn. That ward held our family in its bosom. I attacked and resented, and they loved in response (p. 43)."
"The enveloping rain fell from the sky in syncopated waves. I added my voice to the song the sky sang with the fabric of our tent. Spirit, world, and the bonds of friendship circled tight around my heart. We wept together in God's presence... I suspect that our shared experience of spiritual transformation had a role to play in this endurance. Those bonds are strong. They will last an eternity (p. 44)."
"I finally managed to think less about myself than I did about others. I began to taste in a consistent way the bittersweet, transformative tang of humility (p. 44)."
"My resistance of community was affecting not just my Church participation but all aspects of my life (p. 45)."
"With the needs of the vulnerable in mind, we should explore the contours of our modern cultural plight (p. 46)."
"The New Testament was... clearer that identity came through God and community (p. 48)."
"This community love with us, such troubled and troubling mortals, is the story of Atonement. Christ's life was not fully his. It was ours as well (p. 49)."
"'The key to self-esteem is looking for the good in others' (Janette Hales Beckham, p. 50)."
"Benjamin says that the meaning of his life, his identity as the king, is in service to other people and to God. He doesn't want to tell stories about his authentic self. He wants to tell stories about God and the people he serves, because they are who he is (p. 51)."
"Christ and his divine parents loved our world wo much that they sent him to consecrate and restore it (p. 52)."
"We can find the meaning and purpose of our mortal lives by looking in the mirror and expecting to see our own reflection. He would be baffled by categories and classes trumping membership in the body of Christ as the ways people make sense of each other (p. 52)."
"On my mission I was at my worst when I was concerned with my reputation as a committed and obedient proselytizer. I was at my best when I forgot myself in the sacred love of a broken hungry soul for the presence of God (p. 52)."
"Whatever happened next, we had carried God's love to one who suffered (p. 53)."
"In the middle of life, as I've stepped away from authenticity, I find myself fully committed to sincerity and genuineness... our standards for genuineness represent an alignment with truth and beauty beyond us (p. 54)."
"We are instruments in an orchestra, and whatever instrument we are, we should play to the best of our ability. No orchestra benefits from a viola pretending to be an oboe or a flute substituting for a piano... Problems of identity and community have always been a question of harmony and balance... The call to interdependent genuineness in the presence of Christ will stretch all of us across the political and social differences that would otherwise divide us (p. 55)."
"We really can't know ourselves alone; authenticity is no simple path to self-understanding... It's when I forget myself that I can see the Spirit of Christ filling the world with light and love. In that forgetfulness I find, as if by serendipity but really by grace, my soul enlarged (p. 56)."
"The greatest beauty, power, goodness, and truth available to us as mortals will always involve sneaking out from under the thumb of our self-regard. We will be blind as long as we stare into mortal mirrors. In Christ... we encounter the sacred possibility that we will discover, in our forgetting, that we have known ourselves all along (p. 57)."
"In the language of the hopeful foolishness of youth, I told God that I had done his work the night before and that it was time for him to help me. My prayer did not feel as blasphemous in my mind then as it does now to confess it (p. 61)."
"I'm a scholar and a believer: pleasure in details is part of my makeup and always has been (p. 66)."
"The wild upheaval of unexpected illness unearthed more than a surgical specimen for the pathologist's microscope. She and I discovered in the cancer's aftermath my longstanding failure as a husband to be her full partner (p. 71)."
"Not allowed to perform the formal priesthood ordinance, they brought the ritual to life in the loaves of bread they offered on the altar. They baked the Lord's presence into the world, recapitulating his work Capernaum. There, Jesus had performed his great miracle of loaves and fishes... If Jesus was the Bread of Life, those Latter-day Saint women were his bakers (p. 74)."
"That is the entire story of Christ's ministry... to discover the possibility that we broken human beings can be made whole. None of us is beyond God's powerful love (p. 86)."
"When I start to think I've encountered a Goliath in my life, I pause now and ask whether I am in fact the Goliath (p. 98)."
"The people we are prone to overlook are the most important citizens of God's kingdom (p. 103)."
"Kindness to children is not a native part of my life or personality (p. 105)."
"By the lights of authenticity, I'm an aloof intellectual who has little time for others. I'm natively impatient and more than a little blind to what is good and beautiful. This love of the strange simplicity of children feels as familiar as breathing to me now, but it's not authentic... Instead, it's the sweet fruit of spiritual practice in an orchard I had to plant and till and sweat over. I'm not dimwitted enough to claim that I am the sole or even primary reason this tree has grown and borne fruit (p. 105)."
"I have my own trivial bundle of prejudices (p. 110)."
"We're all prone to miss the point, sometimes catastrophically (p. 111)."
"In mourning with those who mourn, in being God's arms wrapped around the sufferer's shoulders, we must be filled with God's love... love may require that we work together to see clearly. We all of us have lapses of vision; grief and mental illness may especially threaten our sight (p. 118)."
"God is glad when we are smart or wise... But God cares more whether we can see with clarity and love into the broken heart of the sufferer (p. 119)."
"How much time am I willing to take to get this right? Does the fate of the sufferer matter to me (p. 120)?"
"These are the people whose stories are intertwining with ours (p. 124)."
"I'm giddy with this ring, in this temple, at this altar. It's as if we got reengaged and remarried in the space of a day. This time I am giving her my whole heart. My soul belongs to us here, as we inhabit eternity. This is my promise; this is my faithfulness (p. 126)."
"When I was a missionary, I thought fasting was a way to shout a prayer... I'm less convinced now that God needs a hearing aid. I suspect that God hears, whether we shout or whisper. Not that we shouldn't pray with passion... But sometimes we will instead need to be quiet (p. 128)."
"When we're doing religion right, we are able to open our souls to each other, often. Such vulnerability sends a spasm through my heart. For some of us... that spasm can express itself in tears (p. 134)."
"The notion of family is more expansive in our past, present, and future as Saints (p. 134)."
"I see why the scriptures teach that mortals can't tolerate the entire presence of God. The tiny little shivers of God that I find at church reduce me to wordless tears (p. 135)."
"I see Enos's choice of words as telling us a great deal about the experience of approaching God. For many of us, God feels inaccessible, like a force that we can strain toward but never touch (p. 146)."
"I am called to live between heaven and earth, and I am grateful for the call (p. 149)."
July 6, 2021
Brown has a beautiful style of writing-very poetic. Thoughtful and insightful. I felt mislead by the book's title though. I thought it would be a memoir about what led the doctor to change from atheism to faith, but it is instead a collection of essays on how the mortal and spiritual worlds are interconnected. I was expecting the book to talk more about his life as a doctor.
January 3, 2023
2023- Jan.
Brown does a fantastic job weaving earthly and divine experiences together as one, from baking sour dough bread to be used in the sacrament to tears in church, as either a call for attention, a public therapy session, or maybe, on occasion a small sign of the presence of the divine, as our physical bodies cannot bear the full glory of god.
Great read. Vulnerable and pragmatic review of his spiritual and physical experiences intertwined.
Brown does a fantastic job weaving earthly and divine experiences together as one, from baking sour dough bread to be used in the sacrament to tears in church, as either a call for attention, a public therapy session, or maybe, on occasion a small sign of the presence of the divine, as our physical bodies cannot bear the full glory of god.
Great read. Vulnerable and pragmatic review of his spiritual and physical experiences intertwined.
November 24, 2022
An intelligent, surprising, inspiring, spiritual look at life and the simple yet complex things that fill our daily lives.
November 14, 2023
Worth reading.
July 19, 2021
This is a collection of essays. Some are profound and some aren't.
August 22, 2021
It was hard not to love this book after learning the author was married to Kate Holbrook (a brilliant, grounded, warm, articulate historian) and was the ICU doctor that saved my friend’s life. Beyond his personal and professional background, his essays were beautifully-written, honest, deep, and thought-provoking. His experiences were unique from mine but I loved learning of his conversion.
February 20, 2023
This collection of essays about faith, Christian principles, and life in general are honest, thought-provoking and touching. I enjoyed them all as they asked important questions about what it means to try to live a human and heavenly life.
July 22, 2021
What an incredible book. I was introduced to Samuel Brown – and to his book – through the "All In" podcast by LDS Living. Hearing about his life fascinated me. He grew up in Davis County, Utah, to a broken family who could be said to have lived in poverty. He was embittered as an adolescent, but his heart was softened and he made his way to a belief in God. He attended Harvard and served a mission, but still remained skeptical about aspects of the Church.
The book is a memoir about Sam and his faith. It is not linear, but topical and is full of funny stories that are heartwarming. I was impressed with how honest he was about his relationship with God, himself, and his family.
I loved the book and would recommend it to anyone wanting to read a good memoir.
The book is a memoir about Sam and his faith. It is not linear, but topical and is full of funny stories that are heartwarming. I was impressed with how honest he was about his relationship with God, himself, and his family.
I loved the book and would recommend it to anyone wanting to read a good memoir.
July 7, 2021
I highly enjoyed this collection of reflective essays on accessible topics like faith, prayer, sacrifice, service, Christian love, relationships and more. I appreciate the honesty of this author. It helped me reflect on my self and how I feel about gospel principles that I’ve lived redundantly through time but perhaps have not reflected on enough. I enjoyed this book - a good mirror of humanity and our efforts to live in higher ways. As the author states, we are called to scintillate between heaven and earth. And we can do so - and we should. Learning as we go.
August 31, 2021
I heard Sam Brown on a podcast and was impressed, so I looked up a couple of his books and bought this one. I’m a fan. This will not be the last book of Sam’s I read. I’m always a little skeptical when a young person proclaims themselves as an atheist as did Brown. Sometimes I think it is done for shock value. It was with that skepticism that I started the book. I was kind of expecting an apologist tour from “heathen to saint”. But it did not feel that way at all. It is a slow journey that unfolds naturally and honestly through experiences that build on one another. The “conversion” really comes from seeing Christ in the faces of the poor and suffering through personal trials like his wife’s cancer, rather than a deep dive into theology. Although Brown is certainly capable of the later.
Brown’s journey unfolds through vignettes of how and why he has evolved into the person he now is. It is honest, not contrived nor pretentious. Many people I know who have endorsed the path of atheism and unbelief do so on the age old question of how can a loving God allow unspeakable pain and suffering of innocent people. Brown describes in humble unpretentious terms his journey with that same question. I loved his description of his mission as he helped people in ways that were not “sanctioned” by the official missionary program of the Church.
It reminded me of an interview I had with a missionary when I served as a mission president. He was a former college cheerleader, super enthusiastic and wanting to do everything right (Sr. Comp.). He was assigned a companion from Central America who came from humble circumstances and a community marred by violence of the drug cartels (Jr. Comp.). Sr. confesses to me in an interview that one day in an attempt to try and understand Jr. they started a hard conversation. Sr. was being a bit judgmental and was getting nowhere. Finally Sr. asks Jr. “what kind of music do you like.” Well of course it was not on any “approved” play list for missionaries. Sr. tells me that they then spent the next couple of hours listening to his Jr’s favorite heavy metal bands. Sr. crying tells me he is sorry. I ask how the rest of the day went. Sr. still crying says, “We bonded, we listened to rock and roll and ate pizza. We laughed and told stories. Then that night we when out and worked. When we came home my comp was upbeat and happy for the first time on his mission and it’s been great ever since.” I stood up lifted Sr. out of his chair and said “God bless you my boy. You did exactly the right thing.”
Sometimes when we get into the weeds of things, we lose sight of what really matters. Brown does a great job, exploring the irony in the plan of happiness, particularly through the very personal description of his wife’s battle with cancer. It is in some ways C.S. Lewis through a new lens. Brown gives hope on how to navigate our imperfect mortal existence. Well done!
Quote
“I realized more than ever before that faith was about more than mastering the doctrines of the Restoration. Faith was about learning to love. I would need to love well and often…the gospel tells us that we are nothing without other people and that the measure of our lives is how richly we have loved.”
Brown’s journey unfolds through vignettes of how and why he has evolved into the person he now is. It is honest, not contrived nor pretentious. Many people I know who have endorsed the path of atheism and unbelief do so on the age old question of how can a loving God allow unspeakable pain and suffering of innocent people. Brown describes in humble unpretentious terms his journey with that same question. I loved his description of his mission as he helped people in ways that were not “sanctioned” by the official missionary program of the Church.
It reminded me of an interview I had with a missionary when I served as a mission president. He was a former college cheerleader, super enthusiastic and wanting to do everything right (Sr. Comp.). He was assigned a companion from Central America who came from humble circumstances and a community marred by violence of the drug cartels (Jr. Comp.). Sr. confesses to me in an interview that one day in an attempt to try and understand Jr. they started a hard conversation. Sr. was being a bit judgmental and was getting nowhere. Finally Sr. asks Jr. “what kind of music do you like.” Well of course it was not on any “approved” play list for missionaries. Sr. tells me that they then spent the next couple of hours listening to his Jr’s favorite heavy metal bands. Sr. crying tells me he is sorry. I ask how the rest of the day went. Sr. still crying says, “We bonded, we listened to rock and roll and ate pizza. We laughed and told stories. Then that night we when out and worked. When we came home my comp was upbeat and happy for the first time on his mission and it’s been great ever since.” I stood up lifted Sr. out of his chair and said “God bless you my boy. You did exactly the right thing.”
Sometimes when we get into the weeds of things, we lose sight of what really matters. Brown does a great job, exploring the irony in the plan of happiness, particularly through the very personal description of his wife’s battle with cancer. It is in some ways C.S. Lewis through a new lens. Brown gives hope on how to navigate our imperfect mortal existence. Well done!
Quote
“I realized more than ever before that faith was about more than mastering the doctrines of the Restoration. Faith was about learning to love. I would need to love well and often…the gospel tells us that we are nothing without other people and that the measure of our lives is how richly we have loved.”
October 9, 2021
I really enjoyed this short book of essays about the author’s development and progression of faith and charity. He was born a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but was a self-proclaimed atheist until his “first clear encounter with God” at age 18*, marking the beginning of his conversion. Now as a man of faith and a research physician, he calls himself a disciple-scholar as he draws on both the spirit and reason in working on his faith. I appreciated the author’s combination of humility, intelligence, and faith. You witness through his stories how his pride turns into humility, his judgment to charity, and unbelief to faith. He credits God with the divine spiritual gift of change, but you also see the work he has put in (I liked his comments about faith vs work, saying that “faith is work” and “work makes faith real in the world”). I love the way he sees and interacts with “outsiders” and the lessons he teaches from these experiences. I also liked his insights into “framing errors” and how sometimes we are asking the wrong questions. So many great insights worth pondering about faith and allowing God to make us holy. This is my first book by Samuel Brown, and I look forward to reading more of his works.
*This spiritual experience is touched on in this book, but the full experience is shared in the introduction to his book “First Principles and Ordinances” and is worth reading as well.
*This spiritual experience is touched on in this book, but the full experience is shared in the introduction to his book “First Principles and Ordinances” and is worth reading as well.
December 10, 2021
Sam Brown - what an interesting character! Such a brave guy to let us into his world. His wis wife Kate gets cancer and he has to pick up the slack in his marriage, learning things he had always expected her to do. He learns to be a better partner and father, things his history and temperament had not prepared him for. I was touched by his brutal honesty - not "confessional" like a social-media influencer but dignified and principled and still willing to go scary places. We get to see how a brilliant, driven, left-brained type of guy learns to life a human fully human life, by being true to commitments and relationships and core principles of his religion. Great collection of essays!
October 15, 2021
The chapters consist of life lessons, not necessarily a flowing storyline. Sometimes, the lessons were too deep for me to understand, and I really had to think through it and listen to a chapter over and over. Overall, I really liked hearing his experiences and what he learned. I learned a lot by listening to this book. It is well written; the audiobook is well spoken. His journey from atheism to faith is not as direct as one would think. A lot of the time, it seemed to be his journey to faith and on to a deepened conversion.
January 15, 2022
I forgot I listened to this book! I listened while on a motorcycle trip, so at times it was difficult to hear. It wasn't what I thought it would be. It's a series of essays. The one essay that I remember, now thinking back on it months later, is the essay on the sacrament. He talked about how he, because he didn't want to risk infecting his family with COVID did not live at home, but they would come together, outside of the house, while he administered the sacrament to his family once a week and what a sacred time that was for him.
August 3, 2022
Took a while to finish, not because it is long, but because it was a slow starter for me (and had echoes of the author's last MI book). AML's awards (this book was a finalist) encouraged me to pick it back up. Glad I did. The books pace picked up, the stories hit harder and were far more digestible than his last MI book. The thoughts expressed in the book were sobering, and at times blunt, but there was an odd poetic feel to the read. I feel a greater desire to connect with the now and with divinity.
January 16, 2022
I praise God that we have ever lived, that there has ever been a child whose father taught her to ride hands-free.
Grief and grace will commingle in my covenanted heart.
An earnest straining to understand how the world looks across the table.
Those blind-faith Latter-day Saints did a lot of listening to and loving of this boy who worked to defy them at every turn. That ward held our family in its bosom. I attacked and resented, and they loved in response.
Grief and grace will commingle in my covenanted heart.
An earnest straining to understand how the world looks across the table.
Those blind-faith Latter-day Saints did a lot of listening to and loving of this boy who worked to defy them at every turn. That ward held our family in its bosom. I attacked and resented, and they loved in response.
September 4, 2022
God Bless Dr. Brown for so vulnerably and insightfully sharing his journey to God with the world. His brilliance and intellect is a gift, and he uses them both as a powerful tool to persuade others to likewise seek and find God.
Surely, no reasonable person would consider him thoughtless, uneducated, a “blind follower”, or any of the other tired dismissals that get used by critics when they encounter a testimony from a genuine believer.
Surely, no reasonable person would consider him thoughtless, uneducated, a “blind follower”, or any of the other tired dismissals that get used by critics when they encounter a testimony from a genuine believer.
August 25, 2023
A thoughtful and insightful collection of vignettes. I enjoy reading others’ authentic experiences, and appreciate their vulnerability in sharing them.
Two insights that will stick with me:
1. Leroy the patron saint of organic chemistry. How sometimes our memory can deceive us.
2. Are you his Goliath? How we’re not always the David in every relationship we like to think we are.
Two insights that will stick with me:
1. Leroy the patron saint of organic chemistry. How sometimes our memory can deceive us.
2. Are you his Goliath? How we’re not always the David in every relationship we like to think we are.
December 1, 2023
Although Samuel M. Brown was raised as a Latter-day Saint in Utah, he was an atheist from an early age and very vocal about it, until God became an undeniable presence in his life. The book is made up of a series of essays of things that he has learned about his relationship with God and religion, which are thoughtful and often inspiring. I really liked it. 3.5 stars
October 4, 2021
I listened to the author narrate this book. His life and experiences were interesting and inspiring. I got the feeling he is a human, just like the rest of us, trying to figure life out. I really liked it.
November 25, 2021
Other than being skeptical of the title (he’s from Utah and comes back to the church as a late teen, rather than being a convert already entrenched in medicine), I loved this book. The essays are lovely and profound. I’ll be buying this and re reading.
January 19, 2022
Really enjoyed this collection of short essays. Often turning a lesson on its head, it’s a fresh look at what it means to live, to follow Christ, and to be connected with those around us. I’m grateful he took the time to flesh out his insights and publish them.
January 30, 2022
Loved his perspectives on authenticity. Many of his ideas really resonated with me. My only issue with this book is saying it's a doctor's journey from atheism to faith. He left his atheism behind in his teen years, long before he became a doctor.
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