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.

The Light Sings

"That Song" by Brian Kershisnik

“Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.” —Plato

Charmer of stones and trees, Orpheus could make the clouds dance with his song. The poet-seer manifests the power of godsong, the truth that God sings. Or plays the lyre. Or both. A couple of months ago, as we listened to my cousin Annie play heartbreakingly beautiful music from her lonely, lovely violin, I thought that God must play an instrument. Oh, I imagine He could play all instruments. But what would He have played as a man if He lived in a world like mine? That question occupied my mind for much of the concert. I think I have often pictured him playing the piano—ragtime—and laughing like my father-in-law. But he might be a violinist. I can imagine His mortal self as a wiry, intelligent violin player with a wry smile and a twinkling eye playing plaintive, mournful, wonderful music. My cousin Wayne imagines a cello, and that can’t be far off. There is a godlike resonance to the cello. And of course He sings. Oh, how He sings. I can’t wait to sing with Him. That’s why angels sing—His voice is infectious: you just have to join in.

We took the kids to the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake for the Christmas Carols service. It was a mingling of disparate holinesses: transcendence and imminence intertwined. God up there, and godliness loudly, wildly here in the bodies of my children. There were times I was anxious about the rambunctiousness of my four. And there were times I closed my eyes and let the music wash over me and wash me. When the choir began to sing, the air shimmered with the sound. It was absolutely breathtaking. We were sitting toward the front of the chapel, and the choir started at the back, walking down the aisles. Oliver couldn’t see the choir from his seat. “Who’s singing?” he asked, over and over again in his one-volume two-year-old voice. The cathedral ceiling was painted with angels, and angels populated the stained-glass windows. “Are the angels singing? Is it the angels singing?” I tried to explain that it was a choir at the back of the chapel, but he wouldn’t have it. Finally I said, to silence him, “Yes, the angels are singing.” And I imagine they were.

“Music is part of the language of the Gods. It has been given to man so he can sing praises to the Lord. It is a means of expressing, with poetic words and in melodious tunes, the deep feelings of rejoicing and thanksgiving found in the hearts of those who have testimonies of the divine Sonship and who know of the wonders and glories wrought for them by the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Music is both in the voice and in the heart. Every true saint finds his heart full of songs of praise to his Maker.” That’s Bruce R. McConkie. And it’s true.

A year ago I was driving Lydia to her ballet class. Lyd wanted to listen to some music, but all I had in the car were some old cassettes. So I told her she could choose between Simon and Garfunkel (“I can’t remember that, so I’ll just call it Uncle Carbuncle”) and Huey Lewis and the News. “This is kinda rockin’,” she said of Uncle Carbuncle. Her assessment of the News: “This is just plain.” She expounded: “My dance teacher always chooses rockin’ music to dance to, which is funny because we do pretty dances to rockin’ music. There are four kinds of music: rockin’, pretty, plain, and both. Some music is both pretty and rockin.” So there you have it. I think Lyd is both pretty and rockin’. Both is the best.

I love living in a world of music. Music is evidence to me that I have a soul. It moves me in ways that don’t make sense, communicates to a part of me that transcends understanding. Plato said, “Music and rhythm find their way into the secret places of the soul.” My testimony of God’s attentive love for humanity began with a song. I was twelve and in church and we sang “Joseph Smith’s First Prayer”—that song about a pillar of divine light falling on a wiry boy in the woods—and I felt truth and light pour into my slight frame.

“Music takes us out of the actual and whispers to us dim secrets that startle our wonder as to who we are, and for what, whence, and whereto.” Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Last Christmas, an institute choir came to my work’s holiday banquet as we were finishing our food, and my expectations were low at best. But they scattered themselves throughout the hall, among the tables—a tenor here and an alto there. And then they sang. They sang glorias and alleluias and they sang light and love and grace. They were close enough, the close ones, to hear the particularity of their voices, but they blended with unseen others off in the distance. I closed my eyes and let it flow over me. Audible grace. I felt close to heaven. Of course I can’t really explain it because it was ineffable. And we all sat there stunned and silent afterward, unsure of what to say to those at the table by us because words were insufficient. I know words are often sufficient (because love engenders language and a desire for communion begets communication), but music is extravagant, abundant. It is transcendent. And I love it. It seems that God might well have sung “Let there be light,” don’t you think?

Berthold Auerbach said, “Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” We were gathered as a family on Christmas Eve. After we had acted out the nativity and shared scripture and story and song, we were wrapping up. Oliver asked, “When are we going to sing more songs?” Julie asked, “Do you want to sing more?” “I’m not going to sing. I’m going to wave my shaker.” He was holding a pom-pom. “Well, what song do you want?” “Drummer boy!” We started singing. My family likes to sing, so it was lively. As soon as the song struck, Oliver began leaping, a manifestation of what might rightly be called earnest gleefulness. His face was sincere. His body was exuberance. He bounded and bounced. I thought of Frederick Delius’s thought: “Music is an outburst of the soul.” After a few songs, my brother laughed and said, “That was healing.”

“The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul.” Johann Sebastian Bach.

Eight-month-old Eleanor loves to sing. She likes the pretty songs more than the rockin’. In church or with the family, when the world erupts into song, she opens her mouth and opens her eyes and sings along. She is very earnest. She feels it. “Aaaah! Aaahh!” Victor Hugo said, “Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and cannot remain silent.” She neither has words nor can she remain silent. So she sings.

When we were up in Salt Lake one day, Emerson said to me, “Dad! The light sings!” He lay down on the cobblestones and placed his ear near the base of a lamppost which was emanating music. And the light does sing. How many celebrants expressed their joy at the birth of the Savior through song? Angels, Mary, Simeon, Anna, Zacharias. All sang. As well they might. One of the ancient temple responsibilities was that of singer. Because song is sacred. Because God sings. Because the song is light.

Newtown

Could it be that the snow this morning might mean that even sins as scarlet as this new Adam’s may be made white? How can twenty small names, so sacred and so beloved, be scattered so easily, so quickly to the breathy wind? And six. And two. I have spent two days heartbroken and hurting in a world of holiness.

I have held my children close, have read with them and snuggled with them and have picked up scattered shards of light that I had left lying around, unnoticed until these two days. The way Ellie washes up to my ankles and then my knees like a rising tide. Oliver’s voice, telling me stories and singing me songs in his bed because I am too tired to tell them to him. Lydia’s rampant imagination. Her secrets and her crushes and her conspiracies. She is becoming a woman. Ellie’s habit of looking up when the family or the congregation has broken into song, a knowing look on her face, evidence that she came from a world of music.

Last night as I thought of those parents and all those children and the angels who were not fast enough, not strong enough, not here enough, I put my hand to Emerson’s chest as he lay next to me in bed. He is five, and his heart flutters and then thumps steadily as a five-year-old heart should. He bounces and shouts, and his exuberance is impossible to contain, and I love him. And I ache. And I pray. And I hope. “Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.”

Liquids and Vowels

"Father and Child" by Brian Kershisnik

You know what one of my favorite words in the whole world is? Dad. Julie and I watched the movie “Courageous,” and it made me grateful to be a dad. We folded laundry as we watched, and as I was hanging clothes in kids’ closets, Oliver lay curled in his crib sleeping sweetly, Lydia stirred a little and stretched her skinny little heaven arms, and Emerson sat up and looked at me in the dark and said, “Dad?” That word shot electricity through me. I helped him lay back down and covered him with blankets, and I felt so grateful for fatherhood. For my own father, who has never left any doubt about what matters most to him, who has always fathered deliberately. And for Bob, and grandfathers still living and on the other side of the veil. For Heavenly Father. Dad.

I got to take Lydia to her dance class on Monday. She skipped ahead of me, skinny legs in pink tights tucked into white sneakers. She wore her hair in a bun high on her head and a blue hooded sweatshirt with colored hearts on the back. I thought about Lydia, seller of purple, and all the colors this little ballerina peddles—a whole rainbow without charge. Through the window I watched her dance, twirling and leaping like my heart, like David before the ark, like this fluttering bird in my old chest. Dad. What a word.

I love to hear Oliver say “Daddy!” as he toddles slantingly toward me after a day of teaching. He has taken to repeating something I or someone else has said and then following it up with, “Right, Daddy?” That will melt a heart.

This painful, exquisite love I have for these four small people who call me dad is true and salient even if sometimes in their sleep-deprivation-induced, too-much-parade-candy-aggravated mania they scream and scream when they should just be asleep and it makes me want to kick clothing and punch pillows and lock them in their bedrooms crying and weep and weep myself. Especially then, perhaps, this love is real.

Want to know another of my favorite words? Fongyloo. But don’t say it too loudly at our house, at least not near electrical outlets, because that’s where Spiderman’s family lives. And fongyloo is a bad word in Spiderman’s language. This Emerson told me as I tucked him in bed last night. Spiderman used to say it, until he turned three. As Emerson said his nighttime prayer, he prayed, “And please bless JonasJennyBirgithandKjell and NatalieandDevan. And please bless Spiderman that he won’t say ‘fongyloo.’” Afterward he told me that it’s alright to say fongyloo in a prayer. That made me rest easy. When I woke up this morning, I couldn’t remember the word (I really wanted to—you know my fascination with expletives), so I asked, “Hey, Em, what was that word that Spiderman shouldn’t say?” “Do you remember?” he asked. “No,” I said, thinking that he must have also forgotten and now he would just make up another word. “I’d better whisper it in your ear, in case his family is close by,” he said. And he came close and whispered, “Fongyloo.” I laughed. What a memory. What a mind. What a word.

And I love the names of my children. I noticed the other day that the sounds that make up their names are mostly liquids and vowels. Each has three syllables, and the litany of their Christian names drips from the open mouth like praise, like alleluia: Lydia, Emerson, Oliver, Eleanor.

Months or weeks after they came springing, singing into this world, I took each in my arms and gave them a name and a blessing. That experience is reason enough to be a member of a church which believes that discipleship is not a spectator sport. Have I told you that the fact that God gives His priesthood to all of His boys is one of my favorite things about living in the dispensation of the fullness of times? Think about it, the ancient tribe of Ephraim didn’t get to bless their own kids. Most fathers in most churches don’t get the honor. But I do. So rad. So good. As a father, who has had the opportunity to spend a little time with this newly-minted soul in the strict sense (body and spirit), and who cares deeply about its future, I get to take the child in my warm, imperfect hands and pronounce a blessing. It is sacred. One of my favorite things of being a member of the Church. These verses are often in my mind at those times: “The Lord bless thee, and keep thee. The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee. The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace” (Numbers 6:24-26). And this passage from Gilead: “There is a reality in blessing . . . . It doesn’t enhance sacredness, but it acknowledges it, and there is power in that.” To acknowledge the holiness of these bright infants. To hold them in a circle of men with the express desire to pronounce words which will sanctify their existence. I love it.

Julie pointed out the other day that certain aspects of their blessings have foretold defining attributes in their lives. Oliver was blessed with a sense of humor. He has the greatest, quickest grin. He laughs out loud for joy. He tells knock knock jokes with no real punchline, but with astonishing comprehension for a two-year-old, I think. “Not-nok.” “Who’s there?” “Peetga.” “Peetga who?” “Peetga ah ah.” Uproarious laughter. Emerson was blessed to be a peacemaker. This morning as we snuggled in my bed he said, out of the blue and with no antecedent, “Dad, you know why I want to choose two? Because sometimes I want Reese’s Puffs, but Lydia doesn’t like them.” “Are you talking about birthday cereals?” “Yes.” I told him that since his motives were selfless I would consider letting him choose two cereals for his birthday. (A few weeks ago was his birthday and he chose four: Reese’s Puffs, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Frosted Flakes, and Lucky Charms. I told him from here on out it’s just one, buddy.) Eleanor was blessed to stand in awe of this world. Her eyes are so wide. She opens her mouth to eat the world. She calms in the outdoors. She cranes her head to see things as we pass them. She is, I think, astonished. Julie asked if the blessings bestow these qualities or acknowledge some premortal reality. Perhaps a little of both.

Their names came usually after spending some time with them, with their eyes and their smiles.

Lydia was the name of Julie’s great-grandmother. When she was three, Lydie would say something like this: “My mom is Mommy, and Mommy’s mom is Nana, and Nana’s mom is Gam, and Gam’s mom is me!” We were considering naming her Tuesday. As we stared in wonder at her new face, Lydia felt right in our mouths. Her name has, in addition to liquids and vowels, one small central tap, like in the word “butter.” When she was younger, she took to over-enunciating everything, calling me “datty” and pronouncing her own name “Lytia.” I think the first thing I did after she was born after I almost fainted and then cried was to sing to her. Then I held her and turned to my mother, “There’s no way you love me as much as I love this baby.” “You wouldn’t understand it until this moment, Rob.” The name mostly just means “a woman from Lydia,” but there’s a meaning of “beauty” from questionable etymology. When we named her, I imagined it had something to do with light. “Lover of light,” or something like that. She was always staring at the lights. Lydia was a seller of purple who loved and helped Paul. She worshipped God. A girl “whose heart the Lord opened” so that “she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul.” She was full of hospitality. She sold a color. She is, in my book, lovely.  

Emerson was named for my wife’s grandfather, in a roundabout sort of way. Julie’s grandpa was an American literature professor. Julie’s dad once asked his dad why he got a PhD in literature. “I was reading Emerson one day and thought to myself, ‘I have a master’s degree in literature, and I can’t understand Emerson.’ So I got a PhD.” That was the way Bri was. He was a deeply engaged and engaging man. He could talk with anyone about anything. He was genuinely interested in life. And so intelligent and so gentle. Bob then asked his dad, “So, now do you understand Emerson.” Bri’s response was quintessential: “You don’t understand Emerson; you experience him.” That is a very Emersonian sentiment. His name is also a shout-out to books and bookishness and writing. He comes from a family of bibliophiles, and he is one himself. Emerson means “son of a good home.” It’s a hopeful name. His middle name is my middle name, my grandfather’s name. A sturdy, usurping name: James.

Oliver was a childhood friend of mine, the good son of good parents. His father was in love with laughter. He had a solid door—oak, probably. It hurt my small hands to knock on it. Was their doorbell broken? Why was I always knocking on that hard door? His mother was Chinese. They invited us to dinner one night and I fear we were far from gracious. There is little sense of others’ feelings in children, at least of adults’ feelings. Oliver and I reconfigured fireworks and invited people to pay money to come to a dazzling show. The first one had surprised us with how well it worked. The grand finale just began to smoke and then flame, like a log, like newspaper. I can’t begin to tell you the disappointment I felt. We rode bikes on dirthills and threw mud balls filled with dog droppings at our neighborhood enemies. There were Olivers in our family tree. Mary Oliver writes lovely poetry sometimes. I think I had been reading her poetry around the time I blessed him:

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened

or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

That’s a good poem. And all those vowels. The name means “peace” or “kind one.” He has brown eyes, the only one. He also has my face and my wife’s grandfather’s name for his middle name: Willis. There are more stories about all these people than I have time to tell. So many people we love so dearly.

Eleanor is almost all liquids and vowels. She was named for my gentle grandmother, who was at that time dying and who used to give me cinnamon gum when I visited her southern California house. She laughed easily and never scolded. She baked and cooked and fed and nourished. When I held my infant daughter, I would imagine I was holding my own grandmother. It was a strange thought. She was ten pounds, two ounces, and our souls delighted in fatness. Her name means “mercy,” and she has been a tender mercy. She is beginning to roll all over this green earth and to smile a lot and to sleep mostly through the night.

And I roll on, day by day, swimming in the liquids and vowels, in the miracle of dadness. O’s and A’s and E’s and I’s of praise. Beautiful, good home, peaceful, merciful dadness.

Blessed Thankfulness

"Healing" by Brian Kershisnik

I came across something recently in my scriptures that instructed and delighted me. Have you ever noticed the peculiar, powerful, lovely connection between giving thanks and blessing in the accounts of the life of the Savior? The two ideas seem to be synonymous, interchangeable, in the Gospel writers’ minds. When John Mark—that young boy who lived in the bright warm home of a mother who received apostles and prophets after they had escaped from prison with angelic help, and who grew up to write the greatest hero story in the universe—records the feeding of the four thousand, he writes that Jesus “took the seven loaves, and gave thanks, and brake, and gave to his disciples.” And then Peter's friend Mark writes that Jesus, (perhaps smilingly, certainly knowingly and  compassionately) reached for “a few small fishes: and he blessed, and commanded them to set them also before them. So they did eat, and were filled.” As I read this, I wonder if He did or said anything different when He gave thanks and when he blessed. Or are they one and the same? Is gratitude the essence of blessing? Does it sanctify and set apart? Does it render a thing holy and wonderful and blessed? Does the act of thanksgiving make life more radiant, saintly, godly, blessed?

And this isn’t the only time this connection occurs in scripture. Matthew—that filthy treacherous publican who used to take taxes from hard-working gentle Jews to fill the coffers of their overreaching Roman overlords, and who immediately abandoned money at the first beckon of the Divine Rabbi and thus showed the true tenor of his heart—writes of the feeding of five thousand that the sensitive, holy Son of God “took the five loaves, and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed, and brake, and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude. And they did all eat, and were filled.” And when he records the later feeding of four thousand, the words are almost identical, with one slight variation: “And he took the seven loaves and the fishes, and gave thanks, and brake them, and gave to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude. And they did eat, and were filled.” But the stories don’t end there. These are stories of abundance and extravagance. God’s grace was not only sufficient on these days to fill the hungry masses, but the profligate kindness of the mortal Messiah produced baskets and baskets of excess. Seven. Twelve. More than we can possibly eat. When I give thanks, I acknowledge and access the prodigality of God’s goodness. And I am blessed.  

During those last solemn hours with His mortal friends, Jesus broke bread and blessed wine. Both Matthew and Mark make the link between blessing and thanking obvious: “And as they did eat, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and brake it, and gave to them, and said, Take, eat: this is my body. And he took the cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them: and they drank all of it.”

Joseph B. Wirthlin, that tender, temperate apostle with the small voice and enormous soul once said, “Gratitude turns a meal into a feast and drudgery into delight. It softens our grief and heightens our pleasure. It turns the simple and common into the memorable and transcendent.”

My grandmother was a small, smiling woman. Her family was her life. She had eleven children in a small and loving home. She played the piano and my grandpa sang. When grandpa died, she was left with three small children still at home and no money. She taught piano lessons and trusted in miracles and grace. Every year at Christmas, she made batches and batches of strawberry jam. Every child and every grandchild got their own, with a small loaf of homebaked bread. And when I got married and had kids, I got a loaf and a jar of jam for every new member of the family. Everyone was family to grandma. She sent a dollar bill and a handmade birthday card without fail every year of my life. For me and my wife and my children and my forty-five cousins and all of their wives and husbands and children. She came to every baptism, every baby blessing, almost every baseball game. I don’t remember seeing my grandmother sad. When she was dying, her children and grandchildren took turns spending the night at her house. It’s just a matter of time, the nurses said, we just want to make sure she’s as comfortable as possible. There was lots of singing in those days around her bed. One night when I was sleeping over, I read to her from the Book of Mormon, sang her some of her favorite hymns, and asked her to tell me all the wicked things my father had ever done in his youth. She couldn’t come up with one. He was always such a sweet child, she said. If he hadn’t been so good, I wouldn’t have had any more children, she laughed. As it turned out, he was number six; five more would follow. After changing her briefs and her pads, I went to wash the dishes. The Christmas before, all of her progeny had banded together to buy her a dishwasher. She had lived for sixty-plus years of marriage with eleven children and she never had a dishwasher. As I rinsed the dishes in the sink to load into the automatic washer, I noticed a small sign I had seen before. It sat on the sill above the sink. It said, “Thank God for dirty dishes, they have a tale to tell: While others may go hungry, we’re eating very well.” I thought of my grandmother silently, smilingly washing dishes for all of her holy children for all of those years, and I sobbed at that sink as I thought of the power and beauty of a life defined by what is present rather than by what is not.

Gratitude is the highest form of praise. To acknowledge all that God is, all that He has done, all that He does, gives Him pleasure, I think. He does delight to bless us: “Yea, and the herb, and the good things which come of the earth . . . are made for the benefit and the use of man, both to please the eye and to gladden the heart; Yea, for food and for raiment, for taste and for smell, to strengthen the body and enliven the soul. And it pleaseth God that he hath given all these things unto man.”

I spent two years living in Mexico as a missionary, and I wasn’t especially surprised at the poverty when I arrived there. I had expected dirt floors and one-room houses. I had not, perhaps, expected houses with no running water or cockroaches in the bathtub. But they did not shock me. The shock came when I returned home from that gentle, violent, miracle-ridden land. I remember very clearly my astonishment at the size of houses in my home state. And when I stepped into my parents’ house, I rolled on the ground with explosive, joyous laughter. My little sister thought I was crazy. And I was—crazy in love with carpet: wonderful, soft, miraculous carpet. I had not seen it for two years. And then, wonder of wonders, I stepped into the shower. I didn’t have to wear flip-flops to ward off cockroaches or snake bites or fungus. And when I turned the water on, not only did it come out of the faucet, but it rushed like a mighty river, with enough pressure to drench my whole body. It was the beginning of the cold season, and the wetness plummeting from this miraculous indoor waterfall was warm warm warm. I said a silent prayer of gratitude. And then it struck me: if I wanted to drink the water, I could, and I would not vomit violently, would not spend days in the bathroom, would, in fact, be nourished and refreshed. I cried, and my tears mingled with fresh, purified water. Now every shower is a prayer, if I remember. Every shower is a praisesong. And when I remember to give thanks, my life feels brighter, holier, blessed.

One of the greatest of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s holy sonnets is “God’s Grandeur”:

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;	5
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;	10
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

The whole commonplace world shimmers and sparks with a brilliant holiness. God’s grandeur is ever-present. I think that gratitude is the act of removing one’s shoes and wriggling our toes in the rich, astonishing earth. It is the removal of that which separates us from the divine. Every child’s face and every sunset and every blade of grass possesses “the dearest freshness;” everything glistens, glimmers, glows, glitters, gleams with a miraculous light. Gratitude is the lens through which this light is perceived. It is attentiveness and reverence, awe and affection. John Ames—my favorite fictional pastor—writes, “It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor gray ember of Creation and it turns to radiance—for a moment or a year or the span of a life. And then it sinks back into itself again, and to look at it no one would know it had anything to do with fire, or light.” In this passage it appears that visions of the divine come unannounced and apparently uninvited, which may be true in certain instances, but Ames recognizes that the temporary nature implied in these words does not quite do justice to his notion of theophany. He amends, “But the Lord is more constant and far more extravagant than [that] seems to imply. Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don’t have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it?” When I live in thanksgiving, swim in gratitude, bask in open-eyed awareness of God’s goodness and the blessedness of life, I manifest such courage. I see and I bless.

Ezekiel

A couple of months ago, I taught my classes about Ezekiel. Four years ago I skipped Ezekiel completely. I think I did not understand him well or I did not have time. But I will never skip Ezekiel again. He is one of my mortal heroes. And his heroism is precisely in his mortality, in his humanity. God calls him over and over again "son of man." Most commentators see this as a humbling appellation, the Hebrew word for “man”—“adam”—meaning also dirt or earth. But it can also be seen as affectionate. Either way, Ezekiel is very earthy, and that may be the source of God’s affection. I imagine He has great tenderness for this earth.  

Well, I love Ezekiel because of his unorthodox (but not all that uncommon among Old Testament prophets) mode of teaching. At the beginning of the book, Ezekiel is given a scroll to eat, God’s message. It seems that God wants Ezekiel to internalize the message in a very real way, to make the message a part of himself, deep in his bowels. And if you really are what you eat, Ezekiel is supposed to become the message. And he does. God asks him to enact several prophecies—to do strange acts in the presence of his people in order to teach them about some forthcoming destruction or hope. After making a tile on which he portrays Jerusalem, he is asked to lie on his side for 390 days next to the tile to represent the siege of Israel, and then to switch sides and lay another 40 days to symbolize the burden of Jerusalem, all the while eating defiled bread (see Ezekiel 4). Then he shaves his head and beard and divides the hair into three piles before burning one, chopping one up with a knife, and scattering the last one (Ezekiel 5). This is supposed to show the fate of the then-rebellious covenant people. He is asked to move and to eat his bread quaking and drink his water astonished (Ezekiel 12), to sigh (Ezekiel 21), to not mourn his wife’s death (Ezekiel 24), and to write on sticks and pick them up (Ezekiel 37), among other things. Can you imagine this? It heartbreakingly funny and wonderfully lonesome.

So I wanted to make a movie of it to make it real for my students. So on a whim the day before I taught it I bought a beard from a party store and got Julie to film me enacting a few of his dramatic prophecies (while holding the camera in one hand and Eleanor in the other. Who is this girl? Pretty cool, I say). When Oliver saw me with the beard, he said, “Take it off, daddy. You a bad guy. Take it off. It creepy. Take it off.” By the end of the filming, Lydia and Emerson loved Ezekiel. “Ezekiel’s funny,” they said. If that’s the only thing that came of the movie making, it is worth it to me, that they sense the humanity and humor of a prophet. Tonight I was singing “Ezekiel saw the wheel,” and Lyd asked what wheel he saw. I briefly explained the vision in Ezekiel 1, and she said, “That’s a cool vision, dad.” At dinner she tried to tell Emerson about it. You try telling someone about that vision. Ezekiel evidently had a hard time: “round about within it,” “the likeness of the appearance of the glory of the Lord,” etc.


But I digress, I wanted to tell you about the message of Ezekiel. His name means “God is strong,” and the whole book seems to support that thesis. Well, okay, let me tell you about His strength of goodness and mercy. This was Tuesday night, and I got the kids tucked in about nine o’clock (have I mentioned yet that we have missed Nana and Papa for myriad reasons—bless them for all the help they are). I came downstairs to do a (hopefully) quick editing job on my little video so it would be ready for the next day. My video editing software on my computer was damaged and would not work. It took me about an hour to figure this out. By then it was ten and I was thinking I should go to bed in case Ellie woke up for hours in the middle of the night. So I went to pray. I told Heavenly Father that my computer was broken, but I had shaved my head and cut up a really great fake beard, and well, I really wanted it to be worth something. “Go to bed,” He said. “I want to,” I told Him, “but I can’t sleep.” Okay, He relented.

Cue Allie and Alex, my sister- and brother-in-law. While I am praying, I hear a key turn and the front door open. I come downstairs to find Allie and Alex, whom we had invited to stay with us until they move, but I didn’t know where that had ended up. And Alex had just made a movie for his History of Creativity class and happened to have his laptop. Well, God is strong. Alex and I sat up for an hour or so editing and went to bed tired and happy with the result. Their arrival certainly felt like a tender mercy. Perfectly timed. Perfectly orchestrated. God is strong and God is good. He is smooth, I say.

Well, so the next day, first period kids are laughing and they clap at the end of the movie (they had complimented me on my haircut as they came into class). My next period, just as we are getting into the lesson, my computer crashes. Just stops working. I try rebooting it four times. Nothing. It comes up with a diagnostic thing. I try it. Nothing. My students can tell I’m a little disconcerted. So I set them to studying chapters two and three of Ezekiel, which they do very diligently and sweetly. I run to the office of my co-worker who has a little experience with computers. It is his prep period. God is strong. He tries a couple of things. Nothing. I need to get back to class. So I leave the computer with him, call Alex and ask if, maybe, he could bring his laptop down to the seminary. Luckily I had made it on his computer, so that it didn’t crash with mine. He is so good. So willing. I ask another co-worker if by chance I emailed him my Ezekiel powerpoint. It would make some of the teaching smoother. He finds it and lends me his computer. I get back to class. Students are very engaged and sensitive. We get past the point for the video and move on with the lesson.

Just then Alex shows up. I grab his laptop and am about to set it up when my co-worker with my computer comes it. It’s fixed. And my other co-worker is back for his computer. I look at these three men in my classroom, all sacrificing for me, for this lesson, and I feel like crying. God is strong. So strong. And He gives strength, which is an alternate reading of the meaning of Ezekiel. We watch the video and the kids laugh and tell me they are touched that I would shave my head for them. And then we look into Ezekiel’s testimony of the majesty, grace, power, and goodness of God. And I get to tell them that they have witnessed it that day. Prophetic object lesson. Acted out. As if on purpose. Oh, children, God is strong.


Here’s the video:

(the link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3MX9arWxGo )

Do they mingle?

“Never lose a holy curiosity,” urged Albert Einstein. I like that thought and the posture of humility and awe it inspires in the face of existence. I sat today in the back seat of a car with a budding astrophysicist talking about string theory and dark energy and dark matter—these potential hiding places of the divine in the expanding universe, the location where God and his holy angels may well conceal all their mass for all we know or can observe. I smiled, thinking of Annie Dillard’s statement that since Heisenberg, many physicists now are “a bunch of wild-eyed, raving mystics.” A holy curiosity: an affirmation that life is mysterious, and that the mystery is wonderful and the quest of questioning is fruitful even if answers are not found.

One question that has rolled around my soul for years and which brings me pleasure to wonder at came to me one Memorial Day in a cemetery in Provo. My wife was pregnant with our first child, and I was full of eager anticipation. We were there to visit her grandfather who had fairly recently passed away. We watched a young girl in the distance running with flowers. There’s something about a young girl running. A series of fragmented thoughts came to me: “Do they mingle—the spirit worlds? I can’t wait to have a daughter running through a graveyard toward a grandfather she never knew in this life. But knew. And will.” I wondered if my yet-unborn daughter knew my wife’s grandfather—if Bri was tenderly tutoring Lydia about the beauty of mortality. I knew—or sensed, at least—that she knew me and was somehow aware of my life, that that veil was somewhat thin. She had visited me in a dream when I was fifteen and charged me with a sense of expectation of the loveliness of a future fatherhood. And I knew what Brigham taught about the postmortal spirit world being right here, on earth, with those who have passed on possessing a knowledge of us and our hopes and concerns and fears. But do the worlds of spirits have communion one with the other? Do the premortal hosts have access to the postmortal ghosts? Do the as-yet-unembodied dance with the disembodied? Do they speak? Is there any embrace or a common space?

I think I’ve wondered about this in part because my own grandfather died just a few weeks before I was born. I always wished I knew him. I dreamed of him and Jesus when I was a toddler. My father was in his early twenties—a young father with one young son and a young pregnant wife—when his dad died. He still had younger siblings living at home. My mother says the grief of that loss shook my father to the core of his being. I interviewed him about it as part of a college class assignment when I was in my early twenties. It hit me then that my dad was just a boy when his father walked across the veil into a light unknown to us on this side. And that my father was human and could hurt. We wept together, and he told me that my birth was a source of healing in the wake of his father’s passing—that my existence came like a sort of phoenix rising from the ashes left by the brightness of a well-lived life. My dad told me I have my grandfather’s laugh and his sense of humor. They gave me his name as my middle name. Did I speak with him in those days between his exit from this green planet and my entrance? Is there something his in me? I like to think so. But I don’t know. We certainly knew each other when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy. Before it all began. We were together then, brothers. And again we will be. In the meantime, there’s room for holy curiosity.