(These are excerpts—click on the title to view the whole piece!)

Gorko, or Belarussian Wedding
 
We arrive to another milestone of Belarussian traditions, where a young couple places flowers on a monument. The ritual might have originated from the times when newlyweds visited a cemetery on the first day of their official life together to honor the ancestors. We get out of the car at the Victory Square, the place dedicated to the heroes of the World War II, which is called here the Great Patriotic War.  
 
Olga Grun

 

Between Sagamu and Samarkand's Tree (Snapshots from a Nigerian Funeral
 
The first picture in the album is of my grandfather in his Casket. A casket expensive enough to effortlessly pay plenty of minimum wages in this oil-rich country starkly marked by a bizarre cohabitation of poverty and wealth. The picture shows a man lying in utmost Comfort, a soul—or body—at peace with the world.  
 
Tolu Ogunlesi

 

Bride of Christ
 
Three years before that, Wendy dated another guy from church, Randy, who turned out to have a problem with (you guessed it, love those affliction-appropriate names!) porn. Jesus may have been all about the sinners, but that didn't mean he wanted Wendy to date one of them.  
 
Lorri McDole