Everybody’s Doing It…

Everybody seems to be getting this sam result, too. How lame.

On Writing

There are times I just can’t shut my mind off; when I sit down with a good book, but the evil muse bids me write.

And if I knew what he wanted me to write—my muse is surely male—it’d all be so easy. Just get a few words onto the page and I could go back to enjoying my reading.

 But it never is quite that easy. He interrupts a perfectly good read and then leaves me sitting empty-headed at the laptop. Hardly seems fair, but certainly seems male.

 John and I, while on our two-hour one hour car ride, in which Crystal drives in a big ol’ loop instead of a straight line, discussed the idea of professional writing, the skill level needed and the fear that comes with never feeling quite good enough.

 And that is the demon that casts a shadow over my writing—inadequacy. And it all seems quite silly, to be perfectly honest.

 I like the way I write, though I can see the flaws so apparently. I know that I am lazy and could be much better if I spent more time reading and more time writing. One does not become better by sitting on her ass watching Dexter and Grey’s Anatomy and Studio Sixty and Numb3rs, but she does become happier, and that is a trade off she is often willing to make.

 Other people like my writing. They tell me so all the time, and while I take the praise of close friends with the requisite grain of sodium chloride, the praise of relative strangers always catches me a little off guard and causes no small amount of vainglory.

 It is said vainglory that causes me to use words like vainglory and use silly rhetorical devices, like substituting sodium chloride when simple table salt would do. If you couldn’t tell, my writing is terribly self-aware. Sort of like I am, which is why you’ll never catch me in a sleeveless shirt or a bikini, at least not until I get rid of those pesky fifty pounds that just won’t go away.

Oh, now I am so depressed about my heft, I think I’ll go eat a half gallon of Bryers. That should help.

 And were I just going for the cheap, end it with a one-liner trick, that would be the end of my entry, but this damned muse still won’t let me read. Maybe he is the anti-Christ and doesn’t want me to read another glib Jesus book. Or maybe he is Jesus and doesn’t want me to read another glib Jesus book.

 Maybe I should write another glib Jesus book instead.

 (Sorry about the cheap, end it with a one-liner trick. Really, I am.)

And Let it Begin With Me

The bread was like Manna and the water was like wine.

My hand shook as I reached for the torn piece, the light gleaming off the silver. It was like my hand had to be commanded to take the bread, and it took seconds longer than it should. In that hesitation I wondered if I were causing damnation to my soul, but as the thickness of it hit my tongue, I knew that the repentance was working and remembrance flooded my heart. When I took up the water, my actions were swift and sure, and the water felt as living as the water that flowed from the temple in Ezekial’s vision.

_____

I have felt more at peace this last week than I have in a very long time.

I’ve seen repentance and the atonement with the clarity for which I have been begging for a very long time. It was experience that taught me what could not be known a priori.

The suffering has brought patience and humility that no vision could ever proffer, and as I sat in church, I didn’t feel despair about my standing with God; I know there is work to do, and it will not be easy, but I also know this time my place at the table is for good.

 

Ummm, Wha?

So, I’m reading this book by Donald Miller, and this paragraph stops me in my tracks:

“So, if the difference between Christian faith and all other forms of spirituality is that Christian faith offers a relational dynamic with God, why are we cloaking this relational dynamic in formulas? Are we jealous of the Mormons?”

I am seriously perplexed. I don’t get the connection. Are Mormons thought by Christians to be formulaic and non-relational?

I won’t even touch the whole are-Mormons-Christian question, but what gives?

I am Thankful For

my friends.

and the gospel.

and my friends who remind me of the importance of the gospel, for no other reason than they are my friends and the gospel is important.

Thank you.

A Cup For Joe

I watched him every day, buying cigarettes and coffee for himself and lottery tickets for his girlfriend. He looked seventy, but he was closer to fifty.

 He didn’t seem to like anyone much, but he always said my coffee was good. A small iced and a glass of water. Maybe to make the coffee last longer, I thought as he counted out the dimes and the nickels and the line grew impatient behind him. I wish I could say I was more patient than they were.

 He was gruff and didn’t seem to notice when he pushed others out of the way. Maybe if I were in as much pain, I wouldn’t notice either.

 One day, he pushed up to the counter and someone called him an asshole. It hurt my heart. Do they not understand that he has enough going against him already? That he doesn’t need them to add another injury to his unhappiness? But I said nothing.

 When I heard he’d died, I wanted to cry. I hadn’t even liked him all that much for most of the time I had known him, but the more of his pain I came to see, the more I understood.

 Later that night, I was thankful that the last coffee I sold him hadn’t been paid for in nickels and dimes—at least not his own. He’d been short that day and I knew he really wanted that small iced with a glass of water.

 “You’re all set, Joe. Enjoy your coffee,” as I took the change from the tip cup on the counter.

 “Thank you, Honey.”

 “You’re welcome.”

 He called me honey. I told you he liked my coffee, even if he didn’t particularly like me.

Not You

I wonder of you’ll ever understand my otherness. And I wonder why conformity is just out of reach.

 I’ve tried to be a joiner, but initial enthusiasm just melts into subdued avoidance.

 I don’t mean to ignore all your well intentioned phone calls, text messages, and IMs. I always mean to get back to you. Do you understand why I’d rather spend time with the printed page, music blocking out the silence?

 I didn’t think so, but this is what I wish as I walk in the darkness of 3 am, when the world is asleep, but my mind is still racing.

Did you know that I love you more than life, more than my cat, more than clichés? More than those splendidly horrible movies I watch until the DVDs are scratched and freeze just before my favorite scenes.

Do you understand why I can never be happy? Why I only smile in those seconds when I forget who I am?

 I’ve read all the books that say I will never be happy until I accept who I am. I’ve listened to—and even sung—all those songs about my divine heritage, but it is this heritage that demands my sadness.

 But you can’t understand, can you? Sitting in your house full of kitsch, God making your heart glad as He tears apart mine.

 But I don’t blame you. I don’t envy you. To some are given the gift of faith and to others the gift of sadness.

 Do you not see the blessing of this pain? It took me a while to see it, but now the colinearity is blinding, binding.

 But it still hurts that I am not you.

Cold, Snowy Night 11/14/06

Cold, snowy night with Kirby playing
on the iPod and Jesus on the page
All day, emotions dipping and swaying
behind this counter for minimum wage

Once strong resolve slides into chilling doubt
Truths  and lies blend to mired shades of grey
As angels whisper and the demons shout,
Enticing me from the narrow way

Sin binding me like metered, rhyming verse
Words  twisted to fit letter, but break  law
By a tired heart, lonely and perverse;
Each weary beat reveals another flaw

Is there no respite for us who mean well,
but find our true selves on the path to Hell?

Salt Lake City, Utah 11/11/06

I walk these streets with mild trepidation
And I know that with each tentative step
More moments of unquiet temptation
Are ahead than those I’ve already left

Should I look upward for inspiration?
Seek signs from the clouds–or higher above?
For all these worried nights, confrontation.
Is this all I get from a God of Love?

With one step, I stand in the holy square.
Rain falls as I stumble and slowly kneel,
While my breath catches with familiar fear
And my rebellious heart aches just to feel

A single moment of that First Estate
When unbelief was small and faith was great.

Rocky Mountain High

I’m thousands of miles above the ground, or however many miles one is when she is in an airplane. It’s been weeks, months really, since I’ve gotten any healthy amount of sleep, and I’m beyond tired, the fatigue heightening the stirrings in my soul, in my mind, in my troubled heart.

But this weariness is not what weighs me down as I float suspended between Heaven and Earth. It is, predictably, existential angst, whatever that is. I swear I read a book about it once.

The pilot tells us we are 1,000 nautical miles from Salt Lake City, having just passed over the mighty Mississippi, flowing with what I imagine to be the wrath of God.

I’m taking an improptu vacation, Veteran’s Day giving me the long weekend I need to escape.

I’ve been telling everyone I am coming here for a concert, and they all think I am crazy to travel thousands of miles for a few hours of entertainment, but the truth of it is that the concert just gave me the excuse I needed.

It is fitting that Salt Lake is the Mormon Mecca, because it is a pilgrimage that brings me all this way.

I’ve rented a car and a motel room and made no plans to meet with any of the many friends I could be seeing. This is my time in the desert, and time in the desert is best spent alone.

I won’t be hitting the normal tourist attractions. I have no desire to see Temple Square, the Conference Center, or the Tabernacle. As someone who isn’t quite Mormon, but can never really shake the mindset–and with that the requisite guilt of any apostate, there is no appeal. They are not places of spiritual significance anymore, nor do I have the curiosity of an outsider.

I’m here stuck in the middle, looking for some kind of resolve to this struggle that has encompassed my entire adulthood. I’m approaching 25 and this is more than the Mayeresque quarter-life crisis.

I read My Faith So Far between Providence and here, and I have the Seven Storey Mountain for the return flights, always hoping to find answers in others’ struggles, in their journeys from longing to faith to confusion, to faith mingled with confusion. Having been stuck in confusion for so long, a short respite into quasi confused faith would be enough to relieve this pressure, at least long enough to get my bearings and approach God with something more than panicked despair.

I read of Patton’s time at ORU and smile, remembering those cold afternoons when Veronica, Trevor, Jessica and I trudged through the slush in Harvard Square, down Church Street to the chapel, wishing that they had built it closer to the T-stop.

“Hey, if we have faith, we can make anything happen, right?” one of us would say.

“Yeah, if we really believed it.”

“Like move mountains?”

“Sure.”

“What about chapels? Do you think if we all prayed hard enough we could move the church building closer to Harvard Square?”

“Why not?”

“I don’t have that kind of faith. It would never work.”

“Yeah, but it would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

And as silly as it was, I wanted to believe we could move mountains. We all knew we were being stupid. This isn’t really what is meant by faith moving things. At least, I don’t see it that way. Moving a soul is so much more powerful that moving even the largest mountain. Rocks do what God tells them. Souls have free will.

Like when David and I would talk about angels and how they love and praise God with all they have every single day.

And I would always say I’d rather be an angel. It would all be so much easier. Screw free will. I want to love God willingly. I don’t want to have to fight myself every step of the way, Original Sin tripping me up, as I try to negotiate a perpetually dark wood.

I smile to myself just thinking of that image and how apt it is that I stay stuck in the darkness. I love the Inferno, and the Purgatorio comes in a close second, but I never did get through Paradiso. All that happiness and worship and love couldn’t keep my attention. The irony slays me. Maybe I should just be thankful for my humanity. Angelhood sounds boring.