works. pshhh.

"We are saved by grace, after all we can do."

Misreading: There are TWO (2) things that save us:

1. grace
2. all we can do
   

If this is what we believe, then I agree with those that say Mormons are not Christians. Because salvation is not a partnership. It is not "You bring the grace and I'll bring the works." Salvation is a train ride. I can't picture myself saying "Me and this train brought me to Pittsburgh." The train brought me to Pittsburgh. I got on it. Jesus train. Passenger me.

After all I can do - after all of my efforts and works and obedience and contrition - I hope to generate enough faith in Jesus Christ to believe that he will save me. Believing that he can and will is the only prerequisite. But if I don't try - if I don't sacrifice and work and strive - I find it harder to believe. I doubt everything. And as my belief slips away, so does my salvation. So I work. Not to save myself. But so the Spirit will remind me that Christ is the way, the truth, and the life.

Rereading: "I am obedient so that my mortal mind and body can either receive or generate faith in Christ. So that he can save me. I work so that I believe."

A walk is a revelation (is a revelation)

Sunday evenings I take walks around the myriad streets of Millcreek and Canyon Rim. I wait until the sky is half blue, half orange, and the breeze from the mouth of the canyon has safely chased the sear of the sun to the far west. I put on my flat cap and jacket and set out. The houses and streets in my immediate neighborhood are nondescript and I treat them like an elongated threshold; a necessary breezeway to be passed through before entering the real world. As I amble eastward, the houses slowly turn to homes and I begin to smile at their thoughtfully simple architecture. A homemade arts and crafts door, unpainted. A perfectly pitched grey roof. Shutters. Ivy. A misplaced window above a garage - evidence of a family getting bigger than expected. And because it's Sunday, and the air is just starting to autumn, I take it as a sign of a love getting bigger than expected too. These modest and shapely houses - and the trees and curtains that make them homes - remind me each week of an alternate reality in which an alternate me lives. I see him pull into the driveway. The night is now dark and lamps shine up at the middle-aged trees in the yard. He opens the back door of the car and lifts out a sleeping child in one arm, then leans in and picks up a tiny pair of dispatched shoes with his free hand. His wife walks around the front of the car with a sleeping lump in her arms too. With ease they slip into the safety of their home. They close the door and leave the porch light on. Inside there is tiredness. And love.

As I turn back to head home - leaving alternate-reality me to get his rest for the upcoming week - I realize that I have been watching an old rerun of a dream I used to have. And in fact still have. These walks are a reminder. They are a revelation. What I want is not complicated. It is not something I need to spend endless hours philosophizing about with friends. It is not scary or unknowable. It is a simple home, hard work, and a happy family. A walk is a revelation. And the fact that a walk is a revelation is a revelation in and of itself. When what I really want seems untraceable dimensions away, all I have to do is put on my flat cap and jacket and wait for the sun to drop. And I can know just how close I am. To the home. And the sleep. And we'll walk.

9eleven

This day belongs to those who, even now, wake up every morning swimming desperately against the relentless, hydraulic sucking of grief. To those who lost a Someone. I was a witness, we all were, to the horror and the fear of that September Tuesday. To the television screens painted red and grey. To the unsettled afterdays without laughter. And in small background ways the ramifications continue to touch us all, though likely only pricking our conscience when the cold slate of an airport floor reaches our bared toes. But to those with the swallowing, to those with the emptiness that will never be filled…what can we say? We don’t know. But we know. We know that whatever loss the rest of us suffered, even if it means the loss of the Known and the Secure – even if it means the loss of Humanity itself – will never eclipse the loss of a mother’s only son, or a sister, or a brother, a mommy, a daddy, a daughter, a love. Thus is the cruel calculus of the human heart. By proxy of your fallen you are the inheritors of the right to grieve however you want. For as long as you want. May the prayers of the millions weave a net sufficient to hold the heads of you few today. God bless.

The Heart (Part I)

A large footbridge, hidden around the first bend of the well-marked trail, straddles one of the main arteries to Cottonwood Creek. The dark wood of the bridge has been worn smooth by the mix of damp air, treeshadows, and the alternatingly eager then exhausted touch of happy hikers. In Springtime, water sprints under foot in a decided and timeworn path until it meets the main waterway just forty vertical feet below. In Summer, after the snows have melted, the stout and sturdy bridge turns nearly superfluous as the stream lazies into a trickle. But today, though it’s already late June, water is thundering its way (not down but) seemingly straight forward, pounding its shoulders into the newly frail streambed walls. The sound is…more than deafening. It is frightening. It is somehow humiliating. I feel weak and young standing just inches above the angry locomotive; its hydraulic pistons driving thousands of gallons of minutes-ago-snow through this usually sleepy artery. This artery which takes trillions of snowflakes from the heart of my journey and shuttles them down the canyon, along a crescent route through central Utah, into the Colorado, and eventually out to the extremities of the Pacific Ocean. Misguided Californians would claim that their ocean is in fact the heart where the circulatory cycle begins, but on top of my mountain is where purity is restored. What finds its way to the coast is full of every pollutant the western states have to offer, including copper, lead, streptococcal bacteria, staff, chlorine, the moral greys of Colorado City, petroleum, sulfur, the oily spring break backwash of Lake Mead, animal feces, battery acid, and generic mud. The Sea of Cortez is a kidney. Lake Blanche is the wet engine. On to the heart.

Just a few dozen paces past the bridge and into the first switchback, the vista opens up in front of me and I can see clearly uphill nearly to my destination. The air is cooler than it was forty paces back and it hangs with the dampness of water-darkened rocks and respiring vegetation. Five minutes into my hike and I notice that I have slowed to a crawl. The air and the green are intoxicating, but they are not the only things stroking my senses. There is a haunting. And a reason I came up here to forget. And though it remains unnamed and unformed in my head, I know that it is only because I have refused to name and form it.

***

Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Belief.........................

Belief is our only connection to eternity.

seagulls and notary publics

This morning Ellie and I went to the temple. We smelled just about every flower, floated a blossom down the cascading waterway running west to the temple, stood by the OC Tanner fountain and let the wind blow water in our faces, ate cookies and carrots on a bench near the old meeting house, learned about pioneers, priesthoods, handcarts, Samaritans, tribes, angels, patriarchal blessings, Jerusalem, tabernacles, swirling wind patterns, baptisms for the dead, Spanish, and seagulls. Six or seven times she said, "This is my favorite place on earth." And after circling and circling and circling around the miniature cutaway model of the temple in the visitors center, she finally stopped, squeezed my arm, and said, "I can't wait til I can go inside one day." Then she stared a few minutes longer into a miniaturized world of crown molding, garden murals, and tiny golden lights. And it struck me that that is all I want in this life. For my sweet inquisitor to one day be inside. And right there my religion was decided upon, stamped, notarized, solemnized, and defined for good. For good.

Ode

Ode to Spring

Ere the summer sun doth glare
A golden hue doth light the air
To signal weather calm and fair
The boys are out to play.

Dave is light and country fair
Mark a man with dashing dare
Jentry long without a care
A handsome trio gay.

Now the sun descends its stair
Its warming rays no more to share
The sky, the moon is soon to tear
The curtains of this day.

Good night, Dave.
Good night, Mark.
Good night, Jentry.
Good night, Spring.

Asher brought caraway. Devi erstwhile found gold hidden in Jakarta. Korin left missing nine opals. Prestwich quietly refurbished seven trinkets. Uriel valued, weighed, examined yesterday's zen.

I'm sitting on my couch in my apartment. It smells like vanilla and peppermint. There's music I can barely hear coming from the radio. And I'm just sitting here on my couch in my apartment. Smelling vanilla and peppermint. And listening to music I can barely hear. And I'm comfortable. And there's nowhere I want to be and no anxiety about what I should be doing. Just apartment. Vanilla. Radio. Sunday. Contentment. And a weird sort of humility. And I think I'm doing okay.

From my couch I'm looking at a jar full of flame and clear wax wafting out vanilla and peppermint. Behind the jar is a small radio lending music I can barely hear. Next to the radio is a small white statue of Jesus with his hands outstretched. He seems to be staring into the jar of wax. As am I. He is working hard to hold that pose. Arms forever reaching outwards. Head forever tilted downwards. Tonight I suspect he's working hard so I don't have to. I feel like a child in his parents' house. With nothing to do. Completely taken care of. Completely okay.

My couch is firm but friendly. It is firmly but friendily holding me. In the jar three separate flames dance around sporadically, not even attempting to keep time with the mouse music tiptoeing out of the radio. Shadows from the folds in Jesus' robes stutter and jump across his neck and face. His left hand points to a photograph of me and Ellie. We are both smiling in the picture. I am holding her in my arms. We are cemented in time with happyproud smiles. We aren't working hard to hold the pose. We could stay like that forever. We are cementedly okay.

I am sitting on my couch in my apartment. It smells like vanilla and peppermint. There's music I can barely hear coming from the radio. Light flickers across a statue of Jesus. A photograph of me and Ellie smiles out at me. And there's a thin book at Jesus' right hand that recently won a Pulitzer prize. I am going to read now.

the fight for freedom

This guy gets it.

The Rings of Saturn (redux)

Around her head - one million frozen rocks. To care about this, to worry about that, to love this, to judge that, to carry, to lift, to throw, to endure, to solve, to heal, to give, to serve, to care. Oh the care is there. One million cares. One million tiny orbits. One million fireflies disturbing the dark of her sleep. No sleep. A stony haze.

Quick, take my arm. I'll hold your mind. One million miles lie ahead. Half way through she stops and looks back at herself. What do you see? A stony noose. One million miles you've promised me. We walk, time fades, we turn to look. One million flecks of glass a halo they have made. A halo, for thus a saint is made.

The Lion

(this is an unfinished post I started 16 months ago)

Sadness is not an art form. And those that dabble in melancholy for beauty's sake are the emotionally affluent and spoiled. Akin to the wealthy who move to Africa to shoot lions because their pocket books and schedules can afford it. Happiness is a lion. The sound of happiness a lion's roar. Joy a tiger. Peace a crane. Love a motherland. Sadness is a snake. Sadness is a hiss and a slither and a snake.