Making Miracles | Phyllis Barber, Parting the Veil: Stories from a Mormon Imagination

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When I was twelve, the youth in our ward did baptisms for the dead in the Los Angeles temple. To pique our interest, our leaders told tales of spirits appearing to the living and thanking them for performing ordinances on their behalf. I stayed awake half the night afterward waiting for my visitation; however, the veil did not part as I expected it would. 

Phyllis Barber’s collection of short stories, Parting the Veil: Stones from a Mormon Imagination, illustrates the form our longing for the divine can take. Barber describes a childhood wherein “it was as common to think of an angel appearing by my bed as it was to drink orange juice for breakfast” (p. ix). As a result of being steeped in Mormon culture, Barber says “I can’t help telling stories that wrestle with the suspicion of a thin veil fluttering nearby” (p. xi). Her twelve stories are inspired by the Mormon experience—testimony meetings, family history anecdotes, and collections of folklore. 

In the stories, unborn spirit children appear in dreams and ask to be made flesh. A fiddler’s lullaby tames a hungry wolf pack. Three divine beings inspire a mother to send wild sage to cure her ailing missionary son. An aristocratic stranger appears during a dust storm to ask a grieving widow for her last gold piece. A disembodied hand appears over the dinner table in time to remove a fishbone from a choking boy’s throat. A prophet implores a harried follower to forget the demands of God long enough to help him build a sandcastle. 

Barber’s stories rework the human quest for the divine and prompt questions about the parting of the veil. How do we identify the hand of God working in our lives? How can we distinguish the miraculous from the circumstantial? Is our appreciation for miracles indivisible from our Mormonness? Barber’s stories invite us to part the veil and explore the possibilities. 

In “Bread for Gunnar,” Anna Crandall watches Gunnar Swenson adorn his house and yard—painting his fence a vivid red, building a staircase to nowhere, covering his chimney with paper flowers. Watching Gunnar soothes Anna as the demands in her own life grow. After months of observation, Anna decides to take Gunnar a loaf of bread and introduce herself. 

Mistaking her for his long-lost sweetheart—also named Anna—Gunnar invites her in. He asks why she left, then rejoices at her return. He lights a fire and accidentally sets the house ablaze. ‘Anna’s bower—bouquets, valentines, bluebirds, poems hidden in drawers, lace hanging to protect the bridal chamber”—is devoured by flames (p. 87). Anna embraces Gunnar, tells him she loves him, and flees the burning house. She continues to feel Gunnar’s presence and “the enormity of his devotion” (p. 88), and this gives her the strength to watch her husband take a second wife. Experiencing Gunnar ‘s love allows Anna to submit her will to God’s mysterious ways. 

“Ida’s Sabbath” tells the story of a woman “dependable as the seasons” (p. 40) who discovers her own unpredictable skin. One night, Ida Rossiter “decided it didn’t matter if she kept [her garments] off for a few minutes beyond her nightly bath. Just once. Just for the one hour it would take to wash and dry the pile of soiled clothes accumulated in her hamper” (p. 41). Ida spends that hour awakening to her own sentience. “She loved the feel of her body, free of belts and zippers and buttons and nylons, the feel of nothing between her and the air” (p. 48). But her conscience kicks in; she kneels, prays, repents for enjoying her own skin. 

That night, a storm knocks out the power and Ida wakes to discover the washing machine full of cold, wet garments. She puts on her clothes (sans garments) and goes to church, but she can’t escape the events of the previous night—or their curious effect on her Sabbath. I find Ida’s awakening miraculous, given a religious culture that cloaks sentience with a second skin, depriving sensation for righteous ness’s sake. To shed that skin—even for a moment—is a powerful act. 

Another story explores the possibility of misinterpreting mundane events as a parting of the veil. In “The Whip,” Karl and Hilma Gustavson’s miracle happens at someone else’s expense: they inherit a dead woman’s wagon, team, and whip. Karl’s involvement with the whip becomes obsessive. Hilma’s embarrassment and her failure to redirect his energies cause her to turn to God for help. 

One day, Hilma notices that Karl has left the whip at home and seizes the opportunity to dispose of it. She cuts the whip into pieces and adds it to the soup, convinced “she was doing God’s will as she scraped the diced whip into the boiling water” (p. 3). Karl misses the whip while they are eating dinner. Hilma reassures him that he knows the whip too intimately to really lose it. Karl tells her, “God knew what I needed when he sent you, Hilma. The wagon, too” (p. 4). Had Karl been aware of Hilma’s part in the whip’s disappearance, would he be so understanding? Would he think she was carrying out God’s will—or her own? And does a loving God cause one person’s demise so another can inherit a wagon? 

Perhaps the miracle is in the eye of the beholder. Barber’s stories invite the reader to muse about the miraculous, pose provocative questions, and explore the ways God’s hand touches our lives. In a religious community that tends to distance itself from its ecstatic past, Barber’s stories serve as a valuable reminder of our collective be lief in miracles, the potency of our oral traditions, and our persistent efforts to part the veil that separates us from the divine. 

Parting the Veil: Stories from a Mormon Imagination, by Phyllis Barber (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1999), 129 pp., $16.95 paper.