An open letter to an atheist friend

Note: This is sort of an a-typical post. Hope you enjoy it anyway.

First, you have to know that I have a sense that there is a deep, ebullient laugh at the heart of existence, a joyous, radiant love that overcomes all hatred and anger and failure. God, as I understand Him, might weep a while with and for us and then smile, knowing that there is a power sufficient to overcome every hurt, a grace so luminous and abiding that it will ultimately banish darkness and despair forever. The scriptures offer a depiction of God as a Father so loving that no rebellion will not be forgiven and forgotten in the expansive embrace of forgiveness and generosity. There is the story of the prodigal son, who wishes his father dead, takes his inheritance and wastes his existence. When he returns home miserable and hungry, the father sees him afar off and runs to him, weeping and embracing and then offers him a ring, a robe, a fatted calf, and a place in his home (see Luke 15:11-24). That seems like a fitting depiction of God. Or there is the story of David and Absalom. David forgives his son for murdering his brother (after a woman has told David that God devises means to bring home His banished—actively looks for any excuse to forgive and restore, see 2 Samuel 14:14). After the forgiveness, Absalom raises an army to depose, dethrone, and destroy his father. When Absalom dies, David mourns passionately (see 2 Samuel 18:33). Again, this seems to be a reflection of true fatherhood, which is embodied in God the Father. All this is to say that for all you fight against God and mock and belittle, I sense that He will always love you. And I imagine He is not worried too much about—nor threatened at all by—your vitriol and froth.

Have you ever heard of Pascal’s wager? Blaise Pascal was a French physicist and mathematician in the 17^th Century. He became a convert to Christianity when his rationalistic worldview became inadequate to his experiences. He was a great philosopher and thinker. His wager is essentially this: There are two possibilities with regard to God—either He exists or He does not. And there are two ways to live this life—as if there is a God, or as if there is not. Because faith depends on the possibility of God’s absence, there will not be sufficient evidence to effectively prove one possibility or the other, either God’s existence or His non-existence. So we get to choose how to live life in that space of unknowing. Pascal says essentially that if he were a betting man, he would live as if God exists because if God does exist and you live as if He does, you get the peace, joy, hope, and comfort living with God in the world offers (I’ll show you some scientific research on this later) AND you get the eternal happiness that comes from having developed a relationship with God. But if you live as if God does not exist and it turns out that He does, you not only miss out on the radiant life that God offers in mortality, you also miss out on an eternity of blessedness. If it turns out God does not exist, just eliminate the second half of each of those sentences.

I recently came across this poem that captures some of my feelings on the matter. It’s by an LDS poet named James Goldberg, and it’s called “Let me drown with Moses”:

If these walls of water fall, O Lord,

let me drown with Moses.

And let me praise you with my final breath

for lending me his mad, prophetic dream

for letting me wander out past the edge of this world

beside a man who could see all the glory of Egypt

and still say it wasn’t enough.

If these walls of water fall, O Lord,

let me drown with Moses.

Yes, let me die with the same fire in my eyes

Moses saw in a desert bush.

The essence of the poem is that even if following a prophet into the middle of the Red Sea ends in death, it was a thrill and a privilege to be a part of the great bright adventure of belief in a new world, in other possibilities. The prophet offers a new and glistening way to view existence, a reality riddled with hidden joys and miraculous light. I feel the same sense of gratitude and wonder. Did you ever read the novel or watch the film Life of Pi? It’s a wrestle with God, an attempt to find meaning in life. There are two possibilities: Either Pi has an outrageous, unlikely experience with a tiger on a boat, or he does not. And the novel asks the question, “Which story do you prefer?” Ultimately, it’s a story about believing in improbable and beautiful things. I prefer the story with the tiger, honestly, to a limited, lightless view of a reality constrained to what I can explain in words. With Pascal, I’ll put my wager on God, and hold on for the ride.

Atheism, like theism, is unprovable and unproven. Atheism is a solid faith in the absence of God. Rationally-speaking, it is not superior to faith in God. Science has absolutely nothing to say about the absence or the existence of God. And your claim that “94% of all the scientists in the U.S. are atheists” is simply not true. According to the most recent Pew survey on this, more than half of American scientists believe in God or a higher power, and 95% of all Americans so believe (http://www.pewforum.org/2009/11/05/scientists-and-belief/) But God’s existence has never been contingent on people’s belief, so this is no solid argument either way.

Most of the “scientific” certainty that would seem to deny the existence of God might more appropriately be called parascience or pseudoscience. The scientific method cannot prove a negative. Science will never show that anything does not exist. That is not scientific. Occam’s Razor is a heuristic, a logical shortcut, and not an irrefutable principle of logic. And to follow it unquestioningly would preclude much of contemporary scientific discovery which flies in the face of rationalism and reductionism. Dark energy, dark matter, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, quantum strangeness—all affirm that our historical view of reality is insufficient to describe the complexity and mystery of existence. Authentic contemporary science is a humble, awed endeavor.

What scientific research has shown pretty consistently is that religious people are generally happier than irreligious people. (http://www.pursuit-of-happiness.org/science-of-happiness/spiritual-engagement/key-studies-religiosityspirituality/) UC Berkeley has a center devoted to the science of happiness, and the teachings of Christianity pretty much sum up how to live a joyous life, scientifically-speaking (http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/ Also check out http://www.happify.com/hd/science-of-happiness-infographic/).

As for the scriptural anomalies you mention as evidence of the moral superiority of atheism over religion, they are simply that—anomalies. Religion has always spoken to humans in their real-time situations and in their inadequate language. D&C 1:24 says, “these commandments . . . were given unto my servants in their weakness, after the manner of their language, that they might come to understanding.” Most biblical scholars see each of the instances you note (death penalty for rebellious children, slavery in Hebrew culture, women preaching in synagogue, etc.) as cultural in origin an unenforced in practice. To take four verses of scripture which appear to your limited perspective from your limited worldview to show the moral bankruptcy of biblical religion is not only ridiculous, it is unscientific and irresponsible. Science would gather all the data, and weigh the instances of apparent immorality against the overwhelming burden of scripture which affirms the holiness of every human being and the importance of treating each person you encounter as if they were the incarnation of God. To claim that the atrocities committed in the name of religion disprove the power, majesty, and beauty of religion is akin to claiming that since Kim Jong-Il, Jeffrey Dahmer, Jim Jones, Mussolini, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, and Stalin were atheists, all atheists are murderers, psychopaths, usurpers, and dictators. You rightly argue that religion is not essential for ethics, but to call it unethical is to ignore its claims.

To classify religious experience as delusional and unfounded in reality is to ignore the fact that our minds and our experience are all we have with which to comprehend reality in the first place. Who can argue against experience? The problem with atheism is that it asserts that because the atheist has not recognizably experienced God, therefore no one else could possibly have any authentic experience with the divine. It is an arrogant, unethical, and logically-untenable position.

To arrogantly claim that all religious people are unintelligent and therefore not deserving of your respect is, first, unethical because lots of unintelligent people are deserving not only of your respect, but of your honor and your love (see John 14:34-35). Secondly, it is to ignore the evidence. Since most of the world’s inhabitants have been religious in one way or another, most of the great thinkers have believed in God. If you want some contemporary examples of brilliant theists, go pick up My Bright Abyss by Christian Wiman or any book by Marilynne Robinson (who, by the way, has some great insights into the “hysterical scientism” of new atheists like Richard Dawkins: http://blog.stickyrice.net/archives/2006/the-god-delusion-hysterical-scientism/).

You cannot prove the absence of God. I cannot prove His existence. But my experience leads me to value the radiant reality belief in God opens up for me. For me, belief transfigures existence, giving it a luminosity and a meaning that charge every moment with transcendent possibility. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to verbalize some of my thoughts. Blessings.

Pleasant

Artwork by Brian Kershisnik

Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! It is like the precious ointment upon the head. —Psalm 133:1-2

Two days ago I boxed up all of my books and a thousand random things that filled the drawers and shelves of the place that had been my second home for the past nine years. I packed them into a truck driven by my unstinting, querulous, remarkably selfless and gentle friend—a friend I met several years ago in the hallways of this place I am leaving—and drove to a new place. Three more of the remarkable brothers I met at that holy place I just left—a place where the bush was constantly burning and yet not consumed if you had eyes to see it, a place where several of my students literally removed their shoes one day and set them smilingly outside the door to my classroom so that when I approached the class I was met by a mass of smelly, worn and pleasant footwear—these three brothers also came and helped me unload my belongings at the new place. And then I went back one last time to the old place to pack my computer gently into my car and to hug and thank my friends and to leave weeping and grateful for nine remarkable years at Pleasant Grove Seminary.

I shared four thousand meals and ten thousand jokes with the men and women who became my brothers and sisters there. We sat around that lunchroom table and spoke of the sacred and of the mundane. Of families and houses and memories and eternities. So much life passed there.

Over three thousand gangly and gifted miracles, all created in the image of God, walked through the door to my classroom over the course of those nine years. Teenagers are remarkable creatures, full of angst and awkwardness and astonishing beauty and grace. One swore at me on the first day of class and later wrote me a letter full of vitriol and wrath. But he was the exception among the luminous young people I taught, and I trust that he, like the rest of us, is fully within the expansive reach of the love and power of God, truly.  

I sang more than five thousand hymns there, by my reckoning. Thousands of stories permeate those halls. There are too many to tell. Stories of heartache and courage and hope. Students weeping in my office or laughing at the joy of God’s word.

How many thousands of prayers did I utter there? God, help me love this boy. Or, Please, open her eyes. And also, Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

I tried to be an instrument in the hands of God. I wanted to be a guitar—something thrilling and thrumming that God could pick up and play with such verve it would make you want to sing and dance and rejoice in the beauty of God’s love and His goodness and His remarkable and infinite mercy. Or I wanted to be a harmonica that the voice of God breathed through joyously and energetically, something to make you tap your feet. There were days, of course, that I felt more like one of those kazoos kids make out of wax paper and a comb. A buzz and an emptiness. But even those days were filled with grace and with wonder, I believe.

I cannot condense or fully convey here what that almost-decade of life meant to me. But it was rich and wonderful and rewarding. In the dedicatory prayer of the Pleasant Grove Seminary, offered by Elder Jack H. Goaslind the Seventy, he prayed, “Father, bless those who teach here that they may do so with humility and courage. Wilt thou give them entrance into the hearts of those who come to be taught, and may they know as they enter those hearts that they stand in holy places.” I want to say here that I did feel that holiness, that I acknowledge the rare and sacred privilege of having my testimony and my words stand in the hearts and minds of my students. Pleasant Grove was for me a sacred grove.

I did not always stand, of course. I often sat on my teaching stand—in part, yes, because I am the father of five wild and holy children and so I am perpetually looking for places to sit down for a while—but also because I love the thought of sitting together, enjoying hopefully some form of true  communion. Elder Nelson taught us that one meaning of the word atonement is reconciliation, which literally means “to sit again with.” And so, my friends, I bid farewell to a place where I sat and wept and laughed and loved well for nine years. Until we again sit down to the great final feast in the kingdom of God. May God make your lives pleasant and good. 

For taste and for smell

In the beginning, God was getting down with the extravagance of His creation

And one of the stodgier angels muttered something about too much color

And God laughed and the laugh smelled like pomegranates and glittered like birdshine

This world does not need to break my heart with its loveliness, but it does every day--

And it pleased God--pleases God, if you like--that it, this earth, should possess redolence and verve

For taste and for smell, to please the eye and to gladden the heart

To enliven the soul. These are His words.

So raspberries break like laden clouds of grace on my tongue.

It Was Mom

"Climbing Mother" by Brian Kershisnik

Here’s a tribute to my mother: Santa Teresa La Tranquila. I wish I could remember sitting in her sacred lap, sucking my finger as she showed me the magic of books, of words, of stories. I wish I could hear again the songs she sang into my sleeping spirit. My mother is one of the gentle ones. Santa Teresa de la Exquisita Caridad.

She taught me that charity never fails. True love overcomes all things and is everything. It is the it of it all. Love is the real deal. She loves people, all people. You see it in her dancing brown eyes when you meet her and she takes your name into her mouth and tastes the essence of it and never forgets it. Names are sacred for her, not as a source of power, but as a source of connection, of affection. She used to have every phone number in our neighborhood memorized, so she could call out her kindness at the hint of a whisper of need.

One day when I had grown into a lanky, surly teenager, I tried to throw my father down the stairs. It was not a good day, you could say. When I was getting ready for bed that night, mom came and leaned in the doorway. This is what she said: “What happened to the little boy who used to sit on my lap and read with me? I miss my Robbie-do.” Still makes me cry to think of it. What is it like to watch life drift away from its source, to become something so foreign and so strange? To become a teenager?

She used to say things when I was young that baffled me. “I am only one person; I can only do one thing at a time.” Now, as my own flock of sacred sparrows surrounds me and my wife, fluttering and flitting and squawking their raucous cacophony of urgent demands, I understand. She was the vine. We needed her. She was the nourisher. Oh, there were days she told us she needed to walk outside. I found her one day outside sitting on the corner of the sidewalk a block from our house, just drinking in the silence and the dark of the starlight sky.

“I have figured out the true never-ending story, and it has nothing to do whatever with a dog-dragon. It is the story of laundry. This is the story that never ends.” Motherhood is relentless, like the spin of the earth, like the tides. Mom clothed us, protected us, fed us. Watched us run through the orchard across the street, throwing apples and climbing trees. She emptied herself for us. We came from her and became the her of her, in a way. Her reason for being.

“Have fun. Be good. If you can’t do both, be good.” This she said almost every time I left the house. I have since learned that there is outrageous fun in goodness, extravagant, wild joy in it; but she was speaking to a mind lacking a frontal cortex. Always keep this in mind.

I named my daughter after her. Gatherer. Teresa of the light. Tessa of the radiance. Harvester of haloed glistening luminosity. At her naming and blessing, Tessa lay still and engaged as a nun as a powerful circle of men enfolded her. I watched her eyes during the prayer. They were intent on my face. She was draped in a flowing white dress cut from the cloth of my mother’s temple sealing dress, a dress my mom made herself because she is modest and simple and lovely. Because she is unadorned beauty and she knows what matters. May the life of this little gatherer of light be cut from the same cloth as her grandmother’s.

On my mother’s birthday this year, we drove to Salt Lake together to listen to my older brother’s band play. On the car ride up mom told stories about her childhood. But the notable thing was mom’s relative absence from so many of her own stories. The stories were always about others, like her life has been. Her kind hero big sister Kris, the Dave Silva Fan Club, the people at the warehouse where she used to go to church in Southern California. You should have seen the way mom watched as God might as her oldest son played quirky music on the bass and keyboard and theremin accompanied by quirky, holy men, one of whom played a singing saw (I imagined the love God must feel for every person in that small indie record shop that evening, divine love nestling into their pockets like coins, just to be close to them; this is the love of a parent). I thought about the small boy I used to watch perched atop the piano bench with perfect posture, magic fingers moving, and knew mom was thinking of that same boy, now grown grand, but still her sacred sparrow, twig-legged and open-beaked. She smiled like transfiguration there.

My mom suffers long, and is kind, and envies not, and is not anywhere close to puffed up, has never sought her own (perhaps has lost any claim of ownership whatsoever), is not easily provoked (trust me, I would know), thinks no evil, and rejoices in the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. My mom is the pure love of Christ, and she endures forever.

Well, who put the bomp in the bomp bah bomp bah bomp? Who put the ram in the rama lama ding dong? Who put the bop in the bop shoo bop shoo bop? Who put the dip in the dip da dip da dip? It was mom. And, boy, am I glad she did.

Frisson

I want to be a bird
just for one day
to briefly flit around you in
the flickering light of evening
before alighting fluttering onto your
outstretched palm
full of song so sweet
that you can't help
believing in miracles

out

My love and prayers go out to the God-haunted, to the wrestlers with angels.

The Natural History of the Chicken

"They're Just Doing This" by Brian Kershisnik

I liked the film all right, for the most part. It had a lady in it who resuscitated a frozen chicken. That was a heroic and a lovely thing. And she called her hens “girls,” just like the kind Long Islander who runs the little bed and breakfast in Salt Lake and makes exquisite morning food. And the movie had that gentle bearded man with the intelligent eyes who likes to know where his food is coming from and so he raises chickens and sends his small children out into the slanting early sun to gather the eggs of the free-range birds from the long grasses of his backyard—like Easter every day.

But sometimes the film almost seemed to smirk a little, you know? And that sort of bothered me. Look at how idiosyncratic some people are, it seemed to say, elbowing me in the ribs, urging me to join in with a conspiratorial smile, I mean, this lady puts underwear on her rooster and drives him around in her car.

Well, people are idiosyncratic. That’s a lovely thing. Quirky, sacred human beings living out their eccentric, holy lives all over this peculiar, blessed planet.

Here’s Hopkins:

GLORY be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;	5
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:	10
Praise him.

That’s what was missing from the movie—a sense of reverence for the strangeness in others, for the otherness of others. Idiosyncrasy is to be met with honor, I believe, with great affection. I have long appreciated something Joseph Wirthlin, that quiet-voiced apostle, once said: “The Lord did not people the earth with a vibrant orchestra of personalities only to value the piccolos of the world. Every instrument is precious and adds to the complex beauty of the symphony. All of Heavenly Father’s children are different in some degree, yet each has his own beautiful sound that adds depth and richness to the whole.”

The novel Gilead begins and ends with a similar affirmation. Old Reverend Ames tells his young son, “You might have a very different life from mine . . . and that would be a wonderful thing, there are many ways to live a good life.” And this from the final pages: “There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient.” And thousands of thousands of people living this life, every one of them cherished and sufficient and worthy of reverence.

Which makes me think, for some reason, of that baffling response Spencer Kimball once gave when someone asked him what he does when he finds himself in a boring sacrament meeting: “I don’t know,” he said, “I’ve never been in one.” That anecdote is usually told in the church with a little bit of a chuckle, because heaven knows some meetings are tedious. But a large part of communal worship may be the privilege of experiencing the holiness in others, of attending to someone’s utter otherness. This may be a large part of why I go to church—to learn to love and to briefly inhabit the foreign countries and strange planets of other people’s souls. Neal Maxwell once commented that “God is never bored . . . because of His perfect love for His children.” Boredom, then, is a failure of love, and also, I think, a failure of imagination. Every unusual human being, every ostensibly wearisome speaker, every oddity and every quirk I encounter is an invitation to see God’s image in the countenance of the other, is a summons to reverence.

There may have never

There may have never been a lovelier morning in the long, radiant history of this planet than the one that greeted today. Sometime in the five o’clock hour Ellie woke, making small animal noises in her crib. When I went to retrieve her so she didn't wake her siblings, she leaped into my arms and curled tightly into my neck and and shoulder, the shirt of her pajamas lifting a little to expose her cool back against my warm palm. I thought to snuggle her back to sleep, but she was awake, her little mind whirring like a small, sacred machine. “Des wat, daddy.” “What?” I’d whisper. “Ho ho,” she would say, and then chuckle, a learned, feigned burble of laughter. And five seconds later: Guess what? Julie woke to sing to her as the boys clambered into our bed. The body longed for sleep, but the feel of children was a blessing.

And then the sunrise. Clouds blue and gray and rimmed in glory slowly crawled toward orange and red across the tops of mountains, backlit by the song of God. A low, loose cloud like a fog gathered around the base of the entire mountain range: the valley’s fringes, the healing kanaph.

I do love this world. And I want to be a good man.

Unadorned

"Halo Repair" by Brian Kershisnik

My exquisite hazel-eyed wife has no sense of style. Absolutely no feel for fashion. She asks me, a reformed punk rocker and an ignorant boy, if her clothing matches, if her outfit “goes.” She did not know that brand names existed until she was in high school. I think I could count on one hand the number of clothing articles she has bought for herself since we got married almost ten years ago. She almost never wears makeup and happily lets our children go out in public wearing things that somehow got sucked from the 80s into some mysterious hidden river of time, eddying the edge of eternity before surfacing in my children’s closets. Of course, I mean this as highest praise. How does a person come to be so unattached to the things of the world, so unconcerned, so secure in robes of light? “Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies. . . . Strength and honour are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in time to come.” My wife is poetry. She startles wonder. She elevates me from my common ways of approaching reality, awakening me to the potential of being. She offers a new way to see the world, to be in the world. She transfigures existence.

“Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life . . . nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat and the body than raiment? . . . And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field . . .  even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”

Who care about clothes? Jesus and my wife ask. Let’s all be small Saints Francis, walking away from the world, buck naked and confident in God. This must be where my toddling daughter obtained her aversion to clothing. Her mother was a little nudist as a child, too. There is another covering, more resplendent and lovely: “And above all things, clothe yourselves with the bond of charity, as with a mantle, which is the bond of perfectness and peace” (D&C 88:125). Jesus said that God would clothe us as He does the grass of the field if we seek first the kingdom. Julie pointed out to me the other day that God keeps His word. Bags of hand-me-downs appear on our doorstep like handkerchiefs from magician’s hats. Because my wife trusts God and loves beautifully.

“What are these which are arrayed in white robes? And whence came they? . . . These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple: and he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.”

She draws joy from her unfashionable pockets, light is her gift. God be thanked for my unadorned, unabashedly gorgeous helpmeet.

Eveningsong

Some nights when we are lying in bed, bodies disintegrating into the sheets, sinking deep into the mattress, minds evaporating into the surrounding darkness, becoming night ourselves, embracing the sweet oblivion of the often-elusive rest, I will hear Lydia’s voice dancing down the hallway from her bedroom in a high-pitched song—clipping off the walls like a top or a ballerina. And sometimes I am tempted in my exhaustion-drunken state to rage and roar for her to shut her mouth for crying out loud, can’t she see we are trying desperately to snatch at a few moments of blasted sleep, is that too much to ask, is it, IS IT? And sometimes in those moments an awareness flutters like falling ash or snow, like a bright moth, alighting on my consciousness, whispering that this might be a sacred experience, this music being born of a child—a song that has never before existed in the history of the world and likely never will again because it is pure inspiration poured into her soul as she spins and grins in her mirror, standing on her bed and emanating joy. And I think of when she was very small, much smaller than the lanky second-grader she has become, sitting on my lap in a meeting with my mission president. She began to sing in the middle of the meeting. I was uncomfortable and tried to quiet her. From the pulpit, my president said, “Let her sing. She will not always be a child.” And in my bed I begin to weep at the memory of that and the truthfulness of it, and I am tempted to rush into her room and scoop her into my arms and tell her that I love her, I love her, and I always will. But then she would stop singing. So I just close my eyes and watch the song spiral around the room, joining the whir of the ceiling fan, weaving itself into darkness, into my dreams, into my happy old father’s heart.

Thy Nursing Fathers

"We're Just Doing This" by Brian Kershisnik

I have a guest post today at modernmormonmen.com. Please check it out there: http://www.modernmormonmen.com/2013/01/guest-post-thy-nursing-fathers-some.html

A Story of Jack and Norie

"Disheveled Saint," by Brian Kershisnik

Today is the national day on writing. So here are my thoughts about why writing matters: Story is the heart of writing, and stories are the food we live on from the time we are very young. They are the crumbs dropped from the beaks of our mothers into our open, eager mouths as we nestle into our pillows and words flow over us, creating strange images in our minds and mysterious stirrings in our souls. These stories become a part of us and create our worldview. Each life is a story composed of all the stories that have fed it. When I was young, I would ask my mother to tell me stories, and she would. When she was tired, she would say this: “I’ll tell you a story of Jack and Norie, and now my story’s begun. I’ll tell you another of Jack and his brother, and now my story is done.” And I would groan. “Please, mom.” And she would smile and kiss my forehead. Now I am a father, and when I am tired, I tell my children very short stories—one sentence stories about the births of butterflies or the flights of whales or the smells of gardens. And sometimes they groan. And sometimes they smile. A story does not have to be elaborate, but we are creatures that crave narrative.

One of my favorite writers suggests that perhaps God invented time so that there might be narrative: creation, fall, atonement. Incarnation, resurrection, return. Hope and miracle. These are all stories. And stories connect us. They are a form of communion. In a very real way, we share stories. While I took the sacrament today, my son held up to my attention a piece of bread roughly the shape of Chile. It was the longest, biggest piece in the tray, and I could tell it felt like victory to him. He smiled and said, “Dad, do you remember the story of the Last Supper? It was Jesus’s last night and He broke the bread and gave them water.” (We are Mormons, and so we remember the wine as water, you know?) “Yep.” “And then He died.” “Yep.” “And do you remember the story of the five loaves of bread and the two fishes? Jesus fed five thousand people.” “Yep.” These are stories we share, of the bright, gentle Son of God wandering around the plains of Judea, feeding people. We ate these stories together, my son and I, as we chewed small pieces of bread and sipped from small cups of water.

We share the story of the young curious farm boy who wandered into the woods and cracked open the heavens, who talked with God and spent the rest of his life telling people that God wanted to talk with them, too. Who gave his life for his witness that God is not so different from us, or we are not so different from Him. This story made a people. We are part of that people. It continues to make us, to teach us our value in the eyes of the Holy One of Israel.

I tell my children stories so they will know me. One recent Sunday night I asked them if they wanted a mission story. “Yeah!” shouted my two oldest. “I want a fight story,” Oliver said. “Do you want a mission fight story?” I asked. “Yeah!” they all three said. I told them the story of one of my mission companions who grew up in Mexico City and whose brothers were car thieves for a living. He told how he sometimes rode in the backseat of the stolen cars as a young boy and how he remembered them speeding across the border into the Distrito Federal, being pursued by police officers. This companion’s name was Elliott, and he had seen some things, let’s say. The companion he had before me had said something Elliott didn’t like, and Elliott punched him in the face. That’s how he and I became companions. That was the fight I had promised to tell my children about. But the story was really about how much this kid taught me about love. We would get on our bikes and ride past all the houses and out through the countryside and stop on bridges and watch turtles sunning themselves on rocks. Some of my favorite memories of Mexico are those bike rides with Elliott, sunning ourselves like turtles on rocks. But when we went far enough out, we found very small communities of outlying people. And one day we knocked at the fence of a small house with a big yard and lots of chickens, and we met Claudia. She was blind and she had two daughters, and they craved the stories we told about God’s love and God’s attentiveness to human cries. About pillars of light and the warm voice of God. They were baptized and each week made the long journey to the church in the city to hear more of these stories. I left that area shortly after this. I did not speak Spanish very well then, and I did not think this little family would remember me. Elliott was the one who taught them the stories, really. Elliott was the one who loved them so very much. But about two years later, I returned to Mexico with my parents, and we drove a car out to the little fence around Claudia’s house and banged on the fence. Claudia came feeling her way out of the house. “Hola, hermana!” I cried. “Taggart?” she said, a smile slowly creeping across her worn face. “How did you know?” I asked. “How could I forget the voice of the boy who taught me the stories of God?” As I told my children this story, I cried. Six-year-old Emerson began to cry as well. And then Lydia. Oliver looked at us, and said, “Stop crying!”

So we write to tell stories. Because stories matter. Stories matter more than we can put into words. So we tell stories. And we write so that the stories do not die with us. We write to connect, to commune. That is why we write.

Six Hours

"Thorn and Sparrows" by Brian Kershisnik

A boy who usually comes late and almost never says anything stood up at the front of the classroom and looked at the other students in the class and said, “I want to tell you a story.” The story was about his great uncle. “I wasn’t really close to him,” he said, “but I really loved him. He lived on this big field, this farm. He always laughed. He made everyone laugh. He was my grandfather’s brother. He was very old. He was out walking, and something happened to him and he fell down, he like collapsed. He could not stand, and his wife did not know where he was. He lay on the ground in his field for a very long time and it was cold and then his wife finally found him and took him to the hospital. My family went to sit with him at the hospital, and we were all, you know, crying and stuff, because the doctors said that he was going to die. He was very old.” The boy looked in the eyes of the other students and then looked away and continued his story. “He was telling jokes and we were laughing and crying. I mean, he was dying and he was making people laugh. He was such a nice person. And then he said, ‘Why are you all crying? Isn’t it time for General Conference? Somebody find a TV.’ So we found a TV and set it up in his bedroom. And he was dying and he just wanted to listen to the prophet, and he was so happy all the time, and I thought, ‘I maybe should want to watch Conference.’ So next time I am going to watch it more. And now I know he’s up there with God. And, well, that’s really all I wanted to say.” He sat down and no one said anything. But they didn’t really need to. He had pretty much said it all.

And then this big old football player boy said, “Well, I was going to play a song on the piano, but since my, you know, my concussion, I don’t remember some things too well. And I can’t really read music, but I have played since I was three just by ear, and I, well, I’ll just play what I can remember.” And he sat and played something that sounded like grace. Why does it always surprise me when boys like that have magical fingers?

And a girl said, “You know, the scriptures don’t really say what the angel did in the Garden of Gethsemane to comfort Christ, just that an angel came and comforted Him. And I kind of wish it said how he did it because I have a lot of friends and some in my family who struggle with depression, and I sometimes wonder what I can do. But I think I might know some of what the angel did. My dad has this sign by his bed that says, ‘Don’t just do something, stand there.’ And I think sometimes people just need us to stand there, by them. You know? They just need to know straight up that we are going to love them no matter what. And then we need to actually do it. To make good on our word.”

And a boy who grew up in Samoa and has more cousins than I have days on my calendar said, “When I was ten my mother died, and ten days later my best friend died. And it was in the tenth month. And so now people ask me why I always choose the number ten for my football jersey, and I tell them about my mom and my friend. And some people think that’s weird, but it’s like, I don’t want to forget them, and the number ten reminds me of them and makes me want to play better and to be better because, like, I know they are looking down on me, and, well, I want to, you know, make them proud and live to see them again. And I know I will. So ten is a hopeful number to me. I don’t know if you get it, but it is.”

And a big, strong, silent boy said more words than I’d ever heard, and I had never noticed that he sort of has a lisp, and it made me wonder if that’s why he’s so strong and so silent. And it made me wish I had known he had a lisp before today. Man, have I never heard him say enough words to know that? You know?

And another quiet boy—the younger brother of two boisterous, gregarious boys I have taught before, a boy who one day told me, “I am not my brothers”—this boy said, “Everybody gets sad. And if the great sorrow has not descended on you yet, you are not off the hook, because it might one day. You never know, you know? So you kind of have to be patient with people. And you have to know that God always loves you, you know?”

And a girl told about her friend who doesn’t believe in God and this girl in my class “sort of tricked her,” as she said, to come to her grandma’s house and listen to the apostles speak at Conference. And in the first talk this atheist girl heard, someone shared that scripture from Matthew 22: “Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” And this girl in my class looked over and her friend was crying. “And she’s sort of a tough girl, and she never cries. And I asked her why she was crying. And she just said, ‘That scripture was the most beautiful thing I have ever heard.’” And that girl in my class sat down, and we all sat there thinking about that. The most beautiful thing she had ever heard. Love. Love was the most beautiful thing she had ever heard. And I sat there thinking that it was probably the most beautiful thing I had ever heard, too. You know?

What it might be like to be God, part II

"This Splendid Inconvenience" by Brian Kershisnik

“Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.” —Psalm 121:4

I lie in my bed between two sleeping children, reading a novel about a man whose only daughter died. I stand up and just watch my kids sleep for a minute. I carry my wispy, twig-limbed seven-year-old daughter to her bed and flop her in among books and magazines. She makes a small noise in her throat and pulls up the blankets around her chin. I go back to my bed. My three-year-old is sprawled on his back with his hands outstretched as if to catch the stars, his hip twisted and his one leg resting on the knee of the other. Next to him on the bed, in an almost-identical position, is an olive-green stuffed frog I gave Julie when we were dating and which we regifted to one of the children for one of their birthdays. I carry him to his bed.

Our nights lately have been vast dark oceans in which our bed is the shore toward which children like small skiffs and driftwood apparently aimlessly make their meandering way. By morning, our harbor is filled with small, scattered, lightly breathing ships--unless I walk on the water of the night, carrying in my arms the small pieces of driftwood the shapes and sizes of small children. Sometimes I sink into their small boats with them and rock back into the oblivion of the star-strewn sea. We don’t sleep deeply, but we sleep well, in our own way.

Or I am a volunteer fireman, waking in the cold hours, rushing to put out the small fires that explode from the tinder of nightmares, loneliness, restlessness into cries in the dark: “Dad?”

I told Emerson that I would pay him a nickel for every night he stays in his bed until the morning. His eyes shone like the small bright coins he would receive. He lasted three dark nights, gathering his shining, and then on the fourth told me he would rather sleep next to me than have five cents. My sleep suffers while my heart sends invitations to the celebration.

Or this: I sit on the ground, pulling out of the brush of the vacuum cleaner enough hair and string (and even a stray, slim copper wire) to make a small bird’s nest, curled and coiled into itself, which attracts the lilt-voiced flit of my one-year-old’s curiosity as she alights on my lap and touches my face, quiet and sacred as a bird.

This same small girl writhes in my arms one stormblown night to face the biting wind. I tell her to hold to me, put her face in my neck, to trust me. But she wants to see where she is going.

Before he knows I am there to pick him up from kindergarten, I watch my five-year-old, sky-eyed boy spring along the segmented body of a caterpillar painted on the sidewalk, singing his ABCs backward. He bounces and bounds. He is exuberance. The way his limbs limberly whirl and flap like the arms of a windmill, the wings of a sparrow.

I watch my firstborn, who inherited my gift for sinking in water, at a swimming lesson. The teacher ignores her and focuses on an athletic boy with a confident grin. Lydia bobs and splashes obliviously by herself. This teacher, I think, she does not know that one day you’ll swim through oceans of light, behind you a wake of rippling joy, faces shimmering. But I know. I know.

And Ellie dances. She stretches her arms and spins. Her eyes look purple sometimes. Oliver tells tales. His preschool teacher cannot see that his liveliness is exuberance, his heart is pure. He always wants to tell round robin stories that begin, “It was a dark and spooky night” and end with cougars in a tent. He tells me, “When I prayed inside my head, I prayed for blessings for our family.” He lisps this in a gravelly voice. Lydia puts her hands over her ears as I tuck her into bed, watching me sing “I am a Child of God.” She is pretending she is deaf, and I am her teacher who does not know sign language, so I teach her by encouraging her to read my lips. She tries to sing along, mumbling half of each word as she imagines a deaf person might. When I kiss her goodnight, she says the game is over and she can hear.

Is this what it is like to be God? 

A little child shall lead them

"Madonna Child John" by Brian Kershisnik

I sat on the front porch contemplating the songlessness of entropy, the way the weeds creep and crush and encroach on my garden, my lawn, my flowerbed; the way the messes multiply and replenish. There’s a certain dark miracle there in the relentless march of chaos and mayhem. It sinks into the soul sometimes, too.

I looked up to see the stumbling, toddling, mad amble of my beautifully fat fourth-born making her way across the grass, barefoot as a discalced Carmelite, holding the hands of her two oldest siblings who gazed at her with reverent attentiveness. This small child has oceans in her blue eyes. There are constellations and congregations of solemn clouds swirling behind her piercing glance. She communicates much without words. There are worlds in her seeric eyes.

My third-born son followed behind the procession, bent toward the small prophetess. Ellie crouched at the edge of the green lawn to examine a rock. She made a wondering sound. Lydia, Emerson, and Oliver all joined her in her genuflection toward the stone. They each touched it in turn with gentle affection. Then Ellie shot up and pointed excitedly. The neighbor dog had come wandering into her consciousness. The children admired with her. She bent for a snail. They dropped to their knees. And I wanted to join them. Isaiah says that in the Millennium, when there is peace among all creatures, when the wolf and the lamb bound recklessly and joyously united down the grassy slopes and the lion and the ox share a communal feast of straw, that a little child shall lead them. I think it was Boyd K. Packer who said that every time a child is born the world is renewed in innocence.

This small baby comes angling toward me with her dimpled smile and her wry laugh and her knowing, ancient eyes, carrying something that looks like a bag full of translucent shards of colored light, and I think that this is what it will take for the world to be born again. We will have to trust to the eyes of a little child to walk into the new country of wonder and awe and magic that God has in His infinite generosity and imagination prepared for us. We will have to become such astonished, bright-eyed creatures ourselves. And I think I will like that world, too.

Wine to Water

"Unknown Allegory . . . " by Brian Kershisnik

Holiness is in the eye of the beholder. As I took the sacrament yesterday, I thought about how Jesus turned water to wine, and Joseph Smith turned it back into water. Both acts were, I think, gestures toward acknowledging the holiness of common things.

The thing is, Jesus turns water to wine every day. “I am the true vine,” He said. Wine is water which has passed through the vine. Jesus is the Creator. This is what He does. He breathes miracles. Everything He touches turns green and buds and blossoms and changes. He can change hearts and souls. Of course He can make the extravagant, impossible move of generating fifteen firkins of the finest, holiest wine from six regular barrels filled with liquid made of two parts hydrogen for each part oxygen. Of course.

But the theology of Joseph Smith is one which acknowledges that so can man. Harold Bloom, that old poetic-religious atheist, called Joseph a religious genius, and I think his genius lies in his vision of mankind as holy and of the universal availability of sacred experience. The revelation that changed wine back into water is found in the Doctrine and Covenants. The historical background for section 27 reads like this:

Revelation given to Joseph Smith the Prophet, at Harmony, Pennsylvania, August 1830. In preparation for a religious service at which the sacrament of bread and wine was to be administered, Joseph set out to procure wine. He was met by a heavenly messenger and received this revelation, a portion of which was written at the time and the remainder in the September following. Water is now used instead of wine in the sacramental services of the Church.

What the angel actually said, using the words of Jesus, was this: “I say unto you, that it mattereth not what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink when ye partake of the sacrament, if it so be that ye do it with an eye single to my glory—remembering unto the Father my body which was laid down for you, and my blood which was shed for the remission of your sins.” Eat donuts or tortillas, but think of me, and it is sacred. So yesterday I ate store-bought white bread and drank water from the tap, and I remembered Jesus. And it was a sanctifying sacred experience. Think of the implications: holiness is what you find in your pantry at home. It is what you water your lawn with. It struck me and stayed in my mind this week the way the water looked as it came out of the hose onto the sunbaked lawn and dirt. It was perfectly clear until it reflected back the high sun and became a resplendent glory, the rounded edges of water looking liquid and eternal before they sank into the earth and became just mud and wet yellow grass. Holy mud and holy yellow grass.

Wine is holy, yes, but there’s a holiness in water, too. Simpler and more ubiquitous, but perhaps no less exquisite. It is the stuff of rain and tears. Something to swallow the pills. Walk into the world and listen to the swallows spill their songs to the clouds, harbingers of holiness. And see the miracle. Taste the wine in the water.

Lacrimosa et risum

"Festival," by Brian Kershisnik

Ah, this world is so broken, and my heart is broken, and I don’t see how God’s heart is not broken, except that He is God and even when His heart is broken, He knows it will not always be broken, because He heals all things and wipes away all tears from off all eyes, personally and one by one, and yes, I believe that. There’s that heartbreakingly lovely passage in Gilead: “Augustine says the Lord loves each of us as an only child, and that has to be true. ‘He will wipe the tears from all faces.’ It takes nothing from the loveliness of the verse to say that is exactly what will be required.” The promise points to the reality of the need. To allow God to come to my face and wipe away tears requires a vulnerability and a humility seldom encountered in adults. But I think that is what it will take, to acknowledge him as Father. And sometimes perhaps our brokenness brings us to that point where we say, “Yes, now, please come and wipe them away. I have tried and tried, but my hands don’t work, and I need your gentle fingers to dry my face.” Perhaps that is the point. Children know they need someone to take away their tears.

I was reading this poem by Rilke called “Christ and the Children” (“And like the flowers that shoot up galore / on early days in spring, / the children flock to him, / while adults rarely mention his name. / For children have been friends with him for long / and they hurry to the gate of his embrace. / A pale one says, ‘You surely are the grace / for which my mother daily lifts her hands.’”) and then I looked up to see my children playing with the neighbor children in a sprinkler—their eyes were all bright and shining and good, and I saw Christ in the children. I saw, too, the other day while I was driving in my car a young girl—maybe ten years old—summer-sunbrowned and riding her bicycle, making wild gestures with her hands and sort of swinging her hair back and forth to make her friend behind her laugh on her bicycle. I wished her future husband could see that youthfulness, that exuberance. He will know her as a lovely young woman, but not as a girl. I feel privileged to know my daughter as a girl.

But here’s the thing, I was thinking the other day of this time a friend of mine called me to tell me that his daughter had been raped. I went over to his house, and he cried into my arms, and said he had a fifty cent solution, he had a fifty cent solution, and he shook in rage and grief, and I laid my hands on his head to give him a blessing. What do you say at such a time? Why do daughters get raped? Why do friends shake in my arms? How does such darkness exist in a world that has shown itself to me so often in so much splendor? How does one offer any real comfort, any real hope when you can’t fix it, can’t take it back, can’t change the world? Well, God pours out love, which is not always the same thing as healing. But it’s something, and it’s real.

My wife is downstairs right now, playing gently on the piano: Pachelbel’s Canon. A song she learned because I love it and she loves me. And I am reminded that one day the air will begin to shimmer and shake and hum with a music that is not of this world. And a light will come from the east, growing in intensity and brightness, causing the air to shake, to undulate and roll, to swell and to sing. Causing the grass to reach and to sing and the trees to shiver with music. And I will feel myself becoming lighter, sorrow and heaviness melting away like snow in spring, will feel the joy I have always known myself capable of, will look around to see others, to find ourselves soaring through the air. To meet the Lord in the clouds, the scripture says. A new song. We will come singing a new song. A song beyond words but created with human voices. And the voices of others, of angels and gods. I will know the words or the non-words, the motions of the mouth and the movement of lungs even though I have never heard it, yet I know I have heard it. I was born from this song, brought forth from this light. And the Lord will wipe away all tears from off all eyes. There will be no more sorrow and no more death. I will know as I am known. I will rise. The earth will become new. All things will be new. All things. All things.

The Tiptoe

So often the prelude to the rhapsody is the ticking of a clock. Like a toddler waiting to be lifted into the arms of God, we sometimes tire of looking up, hands outstretched, and content ourselves instead with the blocks and toys which surround us. But then the embrace comes and we are raised. And we remember what we were waiting for.

My theology stresses the reality of continued, continuing revelation: God speaks, not spake. It affirms that every person is worth communicating with, even if you’re God. No—especially if you’re God. But it is sometimes a real wrestle to know when He is speaking and what He wants. It takes attentiveness, and patience. Sometimes weeks pass without a whisper. “And he hath put a new song in my mouth,” soliloquizes the Psalmist. Ah, the taste of that song. But two verses earlier, he wrote, “I waited patiently for the Lord, and he inclined unto me and heard my cry.” The song only comes after the wait, after the cry. And it is always put or placed in my mouth. I cannot conjure it or command it. Every poet knows this. The mornings glisten once in a while. So much scent of sidewalk before the smell of honeysuckle. The music is a gift and one can only stalk the Spirit and wait. How many hours does a prophet spend under a juniper tree or inside a cave before the gentle rustle of leaves and the still, small voice?

It’s sort of like this: Was it last summer we were camping at the Henry Cowell Redwoods? When we pulled up to the forest, four-year-old Emerson said he knew we would see squirrels. But the squirrels in the camp proved very elusive, very timid. After a day of camping, I had seen brief glimpses of a couple of squirrels and chipmunks off in the trees and bushes, but not a single furry animal made its way into our camp. I asked my young son if he had seen any squirrels. He told me no. So we went on a squirrel hunt. As we walked I told him to listen very carefully, and if he heard a rustling, we would watch the bushes carefully. After a short distance, the bushes quaked a little. We stopped and strained our attention toward the spot. After watching for a while, we finally caught sight of a slight movement. But as we kept watching, we found only a small bird hopping around in the leaves. We went on. Emerson climbed a tree and we went down a little trail. No squirrels. I prayed, “Heavenly Father, Emerson knew he would see a squirrel, and it’s important to him. Can you help?” Just then I saw a squirrel at the foot of a camper in a nearby campsite. I tried to point it out to Emerson. He couldn’t see it. We went closer, slowly. The squirrel ran into the bushes. “Did you see it?” I asked. “I think so. I saw the bushes move.” But he wasn’t content with that. We surrounded the little rodent and listened as he crashed through the bushes. Now, I have more experience stalking squirrels than my son does, and I’ve got a bit of a height advantage so I saw the squirrel a couple of times as it darted back and forth. But Emerson never caught a clear view. We walked on. “Well, thanks for trying,” I said to God. I bet He laughed at that. “Trying?” Within a few feet, I saw another squirrel at the base of a tree. I tiptoed Emerson over and lifted him up. He saw it. He wanted to get closer, so he walked after it. It ran up the tree, chattering, and another squirrel joined it. Then it happened. Like a flood. Like an ocean wave. Like sunlight or like grace, God poured down what we had so cautiously been stalking. The squirrels ran around and up and down the tree, chasing each other. They ran two feet from our toes. One stopped on the tree, just above our heads and looked squarely at us. I almost thought he winked. He may have been an angel disguised as a squirrel, but my prayer had been answered. Emerson’s faith had been answered. The wait had been rewarded. We saw. Our attentiveness had paid off. Sometimes it does.

A day or so later we were out for a family walk through thick green woods. It was evening and the light was gray and mossy. It slid in sideways to illuminate the trail. We were walking through these curvy, moss-covered trees at twilight, and we saw an owl. First owl I’ve ever seen. It was hunched in the branches of a tree, and we stopped to tie a shoelace or something. And then it spread its enormous wings and lumbered through the air off to another perch. Grace unbidden.

Days go by, and months, and the reverie remains restrained. The mute muses shy by disguised as fellow pedestrians on the sidewalk we stroll. Life is just life. Mondays are mundane, and nothing extraordinary presents itself. And then the symphony awakens, stretching like a dance; the song is planted and shoots forth and ripens all at once. And we partake of the fruit of the tree of life.

85:10

The Psalmist doesn’t say

whether they were in a tree or not

or whether it began with holding hands

or really anything about how these two

old friends ended up in passionate embrace

Just this: “Righteousness and Peace have kissed each other.”

Reported with the laconic stroke of a headline.

How does he even know something so personal?

Were there witnesses?

Was old David hiding in the bushes

stilling the strings of his old harp

as these two came ambling into the space

lighted by streetlamp, laughing together?

Were they walking home

from the house of a mutual friend

where their eyes just happened to collide

for the briefest, most enduring moment?

Did the singer see the brush of hands,

the lighting of eyes and the quickening

of pulses?

Did the two just decide by happenstance

to climb a sycamore tree

to watch the moon rise over the valley?

And was it Righteousness who made the first move

or Peace, with his gentle, shy, yet manly ways

who first leaned in with more than friendly intent?

Did he grab her by the arms like they do in the old movies,

or was it just a gentle peck on the cheek?

These are only questions, but one thing is certain:

Things have never been the same since the day

that Righteousness and Peace kissed each other,

and everything is charged with hope.

What it might be like to be God

"Father and Son Dancing" by Brian Kershisnik

The other night as we were sitting around the dinner table, Julie asked the kids what they would do if they had an infinite amount of money. Lydia’s eyes got big and she smilingly asked, “What’s that country again where they still have queens and stuff?” “England?” Julie offered. “Yeah,” Lyd said, “I would go to England, and when they found out that I had so much money, they would make me queen!” Her eyes pirouetted and shone. “Why do you want to be a queen?” Julie asked. “It’s just a dream I have,” Lyd said simply. Emerson said, “You wouldn’t like what I’d do with it, mom.” “Why’s that?” “Because I would buy a whole lot of stuff with sugar.” We’ve been reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory lately, and last night Em told me, “I wish this book was true and I was Charlie.” You could see the reality of the wish in his eyes. They have interpreted the term sweet tooth as sugar tooth, and Emerson has told me several times that all of his teeth are sugar teeth.

Julie’s own visions of infinite wealth were all pretty domestic and simple: a new washer and dryer, new carpet, and the big splurge: a bathroom in the basement. She wouldn’t move from our 1970’s funky old mansard-roofed house, just make it a little more comfortable. She said she’d keep working one night a week to keep her nursing credentials current. I love the contentedness of her soul. Did Andrew Carnegie really say, “Show me a man who is contented, and I will show you a failure”? Pardon me, but what an asinine remark from an otherwise rather large-hearted man. I think I buy in more to Paul’s school of thought: “I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.” “I have all, and abound: I am full.” One evening I was sitting on my kitchen floor watching my children laugh and dance and spin. I was considering pursuing a doctorate degree at the time, and I thought, “This is what I would sacrifice. And what would I gain?” “But godliness with contentment is great gain. We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and raiment let us therewith be content.” “That we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.” Well, I still haven’t started that PhD. Maybe someday, but for now I will sit contentedly on the kitchen floor, being a dad.

Childhood is a bird, a river, a song. Rushing toward me and away from me at the same time. So I want to cup the water and drink. To be present. To see, dip my feet, listen with face upturned. My father-in-law was busy as a young father establishing himself as a lawyer in a large firm. He feels like he missed much of the sacred smallness of his children. One day when his kids were grown he was given a dream in which he was driving and turned around to see his children in the back of the car, returned to the young ages they were when he was so consumed with other things. Julie was a small girl again, with the green tooth she had gotten falling down.  As I type this, Eleanor toddles over to me and points at the screen with her dimpled hand. “Doh da!” she says. She smiles. Pardon me while I hug her up and weep.

What would you do with infinite wealth? It was a fun conversation. The first thought that came to me was: end world hunger. But I wouldn’t want to sacrifice the gentle life I lead. So I would have to do it on the sly without awakening the attention of the world. I would travel the earth, disguised as myself, seeking those who do good, and I would empower them, anonymously, secretly. I would spend time talking to people to get to know their hearts and intentions. And then I would leave them with a load of money. I would visit churches and small villages where I could sit at kitchen tables with strangers engaged in blessing the world. I would put my wealth into the pockets of gentle or radical people intent on alleviating suffering and darkness and despair. I would listen to their stories, and then I would fund those who create beauty and joy and hope. As I imagined this, surrounded by my family at the dinner table, the thought fluttered into my mind: This might be what it would be like to be God. He is infinitely rich. He could feed the world and fill it with loveliness and light. But His quality of life and His purposes for mortals depend on His remaining invisible and allowing us to show forth His mercies and His riches. So He might well roam the earth as a wanderer and a gentle stranger, placing the shining coins of His grace into the hands and pockets of those who have shown themselves seekers of holiness. And then, “As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.” I can imagine Him sitting down to share a cup of light with a good human in some small café somewhere and then pressing into her hands a small purse. “Do good,” He whispers, “Live well.” And then He goes back home to play with His children, rolling in the deep carpet of the worn but comfortable front room of Heaven.