The new Mormon Matters podcast features Fiona Givens talking about The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life, the book she's written with her husband Terryl Givens. Joanna Brooks and I sing an enthusiastic backup.

As I blogged a few weeks ago, I think this book (published last month by Deseret) is one of the loveliest offerings in recent memory. It explains Mormonism not in terms of dogma but in terms of the God we worship — the God who weeps, who desires our joy, and who will bring all of us back to heaven. I hope everybody buys at least five copies as Christmas gifts.

This episode is short by Mormon Matters standards, at 1:24, but it's longer than the hour we had originally planned because once we got started talking about all that is gorgeous about Mormon theology it was hard to stop. Fiona does such a beautiful job here of explaining what she, a British convert, found attractive about Mormon belief, and tracing those beliefs in literature, philosophy, and poetry.

Here's the episode description:

This episode was planned to be an exploration of the joys and perils of being a public face of Mormonism, especially as a woman, and in particular as women who write and speak about Mormon theology. What it ended up being is a rich, wise, affectionate, celebratory, pragmatic exploration of LDS theology, community life, and connections with ideas and people that truly are among the lovely and of good report in wider religious discourse. Using the jumping off point of Fiona and Terryl Givens’ new book, The Good Who Weeps: How Mormons Make Sense of Life, Fiona Givens, Joanna Brooks, Jana Riess, and Mormon Matters host Dan Wotherspoon go deep, laugh, commiserate, but mostly celebrate the depth and richness of the Mormon vision of God, life, purposes, and possibilities.

My thanks go out to Dan Wotherspoon for organizing this memorable conversation.  Enjoy!

The close-up image of the orange flower is used with permission of Shutterstock.com.