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

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? 

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.

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.

Ablutions

"Gardening in the Rain" by Brian Kershisnik

I like the idea of lares, these small gods of hearth and home—open and ancient acknowledgments of the myriad shards of holiness which shoot through the most seemingly mundane aspects of existence. Isn’t this what all poetry celebrates—the holiness of the everyday?

I remember one cold Saturday giving the kids a bath. In winter they will often curl up under their hooded towels and sit hunched on the bathroom floor. It’s a visual image I love. Well, this day they were crouching on the bathmat when Lydie saw a bug. She exclaimed, and I went to witness. Lydie and Em had their hoods on and sat crouched and bent over the small bug, their heads inclined as if in reverent acknowledgment of the holiness of very small things. They looked like a couple of colorful monks, Lydia in bright pink and Emerson in orange surrounded by our bright blue bathroom. Blue shag-carpet grass. It made me smile.

Tuesday night at our house was a celebration of the human capacity for expulsion. My children spent much of the night vomiting and retching and moaning. At one point, I think it was about four a.m., after Julie and I had spent an hour cleaning vomit out of the carpet and had changed and rinsed four sets of sheets and four sets of pajamas, I was giving my lissome ballerina daughter a bath, spraying the half-digested food out of her hair. I had tried to hold it back in a pony tail while she puked, but her hair is unruly and indomitable and wanted to fall in her face. She was shivering, fragile and lovely as a butterfly as the water fell over her. I was tired, but the thought came to me that of all the humans who live or will live on this planet, I am one of only a very small handful who will ever have the honor of rinsing vomit out of the hair of this holy child. Suddenly the air was music and the light was gently bright. Exhaustion melted away, replaced by gratitude and mysterious tears. How many such ablutions have I performed without perceiving the beauty of washing another, washing for another? “If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.” “Unto him that loved us, and washed us . . . be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.”

Julie spent the next two days washing clothing and sheets. When I was a small boy, I remember my mom saying once, “I have figured out what the Neverending Story is. The real Neverending Story is laundry.” I want my mother and my wife to know that the ground on which they stand is holy. “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.” And, “He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment.” A friend once told me the story of a woman who had lost her memory completely. She did not recognize her family or friends. They took her to the home where she had lived for many years, and none of the rooms brought reminiscences. And then they took her outside to the backyard where she had hung her family’s laundry. Her face was transfigured and shone with recognition and she began to speak with feeling of hanging her children’s clothing. The small wet pants and shirts—evidences of a life of performing sacred ablutions. These things remained with her even when nothing else had. These daily acts of holiness.

Night after night, I stand at the sink and rinse the dishes that carry the food which feeds my children. Warm rivers run through my house, cover my hands, bless our living. Surely, this too is a sacred act. Ablutions.

Because of the angels

Just this note to the late apostle Paul: Thank you for writing this verse to your old friends in Corinth, “For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels.” It has made me smile for two days.

Turns out the old scholastic theologians, Aquinas and his cronies, should have been asking about the dancefloors sitting atop the shoulders and necks of their wives and daughters. Forget about the pinheads. Angels and angels sitting, pirouetting, leaping, reading, sipping, sighing, smiling on the tops of girl’s heads.

My favorite commentary on this verse is from Albert Barnes’ comprehensive notes on the Bible: “There is scarcely any passage in the Scriptures which has more exercised the ingenuity of commentators than this verse. . . . After all the explanations which have been given of it, I confess, I do not understand it.” Or maybe this briefer one from the 1557 Geneva Bible (Will Shakespeare’s Bible, you know?), annotations by Laurence Tomson, who was himself compiling generations of commentary: “What this means, I do not yet understand.”

Well, I understand it well enough. I sent my wife and daughter on a plane to Arizona today, and well, I miss them, angels, power, and all.

The Thaw

Between the rain this morning and the temple, my stale winter mind caught a whiff of the slow, distant advent of spring. The brief thaw brought forth these brief thoughts:

“Barefoot”
 

God’s shoes

were long ago flung

so far into the dark recesses
of the multiverse
that it will likely take
twelve legions of angels
their whole seraphic lifetimes
to locate them.

Not that the winged ones

mind much.
For they have each other,
and the boy angels are thinking
about the eyes and smiles of all those
girl angels who will be joining them,
the ones who packed a picnic
of sandwiches—eternal light spread heavy
between thick slices of
the bread of praise.
And the prospect of adventuring
into the bright, mysterious heart of nowhere—
lifting rocks and uncovering things the eternal mind
may have long forgotten—
seems just the thing to prove
their undying love.

Meanwhile God

stands barefoot and laughing,
fully cognizant that the ground
on which He stands is holy
precisely because of His transfiguring presence.

But He can’t help wriggling

His toes deep into the earth—

a sigh on His lips and a

song in His eyes—

because this particular patch of grass,

halfway between the mailbox

and the front door,

seems especially full of glory this morning.

“This fine”

I can’t help thinking this fine Thursday

that the God of Rilke has come to me—

this infant in my arms

with her laughing mouth open

to eat my nose.

Again God in the least of these

has done it unto me.

 

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.”

Memo to Mr. Alighieri

"A Conversation Seldom Heard" by Brian Kershisnik

Some days I don’t believe very much in hell at all. It just seems so incongruous with all this. Friday the skies dumped inches and inches of snow on my unsuspecting head, my car, my life. Warmed by miracle clothes, I lay on my back on the softened ground, watching the white. The flakes fell without relenting. Emerson, lying next to me, asked, “Do they get in your eyes, dad?” “Yeah,” I answered. A scattershot of birds flew overhead, light brown on white-gray. Such a stillness in the world. One by one as the play wore on, my kids came to me to have their hands warmed. I held their small red hands between mine and willed warmth. Julie showed up at the park with Eleanor bundled in a backpack, bright eyes gleaming. By the time we trudged home, Oliver was tired. I hoisted him onto my shoulders. As we walked, he said, “I’m like a angel sitting on your head.” An angel sitting on my head.

Then he leaned to the tops of fences to eat the snow. When it got in his nose, he laughed. When I set him down, he lay down in the street to eat some more snow. He marched and sang to himself. At home we made hot chocolate and had soup for dinner. Ellie on my lap tilted her head back to look into my eyes, to see who was holding her. She smiled at me.

“O how great the goodness of our God, who prepareth a way for our escape from the grasp of this awful monster; yea, that monster, death and hell . . . . Death and hell must deliver up their dead, and hell must deliver up its captive spirits. . . . O how great the plan of our God!”

I know that whatever hell there may be exists only with my permission, maybe even only at my bidding. I am among those who have “become free forever, knowing good and evil; to act for themselves and not be acted upon.” How did Goethe put it? “I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element.  It is my personal approach that creates the climate.  It is my daily mood that makes the weather.  I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous.  I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration; I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.  In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person humanized or de-humanized.” Or Lehi: “Wherefore, men are free . . . to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death.” My choice.  

When I was seventeen, I was in the mountains with my friends, back-country boarding. I aimed my snowboard at a cliff and woke up a few minutes later. My friends were looking in the bloody snow for my front teeth. We found them still inside my mouth, dangling from the roots hanging from my broken maxilla. I broke my jaw and my nose and my teeth and my maxilla. My teeth went through my lips—all the way through. My friend shot down the mountain and found a snowmobiler who came as far up to us as he could. He took me to a ranger’s station. The ranger called an ambulance. After reconstructive and plastic surgery, my parents took my puffy face home to rest. Lots of things sprang from this. I couldn’t eat for weeks, shooting Carnation Instant Breakfast down my throat with a water bottle. To fix my jaw, the orthodontist gave me a device that might have been invented by Dante himself to punish the purveyors of orthodontia. It was called a Herbst appliance. It was essentially these two metal shock-like things on the insides of my mouth to keep my jaw straight as it healed. It dug into my cheeks, and when it came unhinged if I laughed or yawned, it would either stick open (to the delight of my mocking friends) or come apart and stab the roof of my mouth.

Originally I was told it would be in my mouth for six months. After almost fifteen months, the orthodontist said to set an appointment to get it out. With great enthusiasm I sat in the chair to have it removed. As he pulled on the metal, the doctor asked me if I had taken my amoxicillin. “Thay wha?” No one had told me I needed to premedicate. He told me he could not take it out without the medication. He told me to set an appointment to come back. When I asked the secretary to reschedule, she told me it would be several weeks before they could get me back in for an appointment. I had not understood the concept of blind fury until that day. I was so angry my vision blurred. I tried to slam the door on the way out, but it was a hydraulic door and took its time closing. I drove home blindly, furiously. When I got home, my mom asked me what was the matter. I yelled and stormed to the basement to get a computer monitor. “Rob? What are you doing?” On my back porch, I swung the screen around my head and smashed it into oblivion. I needed to walk. I ended up at a convenience store near my house and bought a kiwi-strawberry Mistic. When I opened it to drink, I saw a little message inscribed on the bottom of the lid: “Happiness is a decision.” I laughed out loud imagining the angel sent to place that drink in that store on that day. I imagined God laughing. I kept that lid. Happiness is a decision.

I realize that my refusal to acknowledge hell might appear to spring from a sheltered sort of naiveté. I recognize that we have a whole lot of history attesting to the manifold hells created by mankind for mankind, but that’s just my point. It doesn’t have to be this way. We could choose differently. That’s all I wanted to say. 

Waiting for Aslan

I finished reading the Chronicles of Narnia to my two oldest tonight. “You do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be,” Aslan tells the children after they have run without tiring deeper and deeper and higher and higher into existence. What a line. The fourteenth century Sufi poet Hafiz wrote, “God wants to see / More love and playfulness in your eyes / For that is your greatest witness to Him.” So happy as I mean you to be. Gentle Lucy replies, “We’re so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. And you have sent us back into our own world so often.” Aslan says, smiling, “Have not you guessed? . . . The dream is ended. This is the morning.” The real story begins then, the undying story in which every chapter is better than the last, perhaps the story Lucy read a fragment of in that magician’s room in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the one she “never could remember; and ever since that day what Lucy means by a good story is a story which reminds her of the forgotten story in the Magician’s Book.”

For the past year or so, we’ve been reading these books together. My children lose interest a lot, but when Aslan shows up, they are all attentiveness. They love that Lion. So do I. For weeks after I saw the film version of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, I read my scriptures differently. I saw Jesus as the muscular, brawny, humble, gentle God-man that He is. I sensed His hidden, muted power.

When Lucy and Peter and Edmund and their friends ran up a waterfall at the speed of a unicorn without tiring, my kids’ thoughts turned to the resurrection. They trust absolutely and implicitly that death is not the end of life and that it’s not something to fear. They have been close to those close to death. When Julie’s grandfather died, Emerson was very small. For days after Sandy passed away, my small son would run into the room where he had stayed, calling, “Gampapa!” They know we’ll see him again. They sense the sense in that, the truth that life is too holy to ever really end. They often ask if we’ll see someone we know and haven’t seen for a while in the resurrection. Or someone from the scriptures. Or even from movies sometimes. “Does everything happen again in the resurrection?” Lydia asked one day. “What do you mean?” “I mean, like will I be a kid again? Or a baby?” “Well, I don’t know. . . . I think we’ll have a perfect knowledge and maybe a perfect memory. So maybe it’s something like that . . . .” When I was trying to teach Emerson to ride his bike without training wheels, he fell. “I don’t want everything to happen again in the resurrection!” he wailed, “Because I don’t want to fall off my bike again.” Well, if that’s the worst thing he’s experienced . . . .

As we were reading the last chapter of the series, Emerson said, “If I’m going to die, I just want to die soon. But if I’m not going to die, then I just want to not die.” I was a little confused, but Lydie caught his logic. “Yeah,” she said, “because I want to see what it’s like from Heaven, but I kind of want to stay here. Because Dylan’s here.” (Dylan’s the boy who almost kissed her once at lunch). They don’t fear death. It is another bright adventure, a foray into the radiant unknown. I’ve thought about this idea quite a lot myself—when I want to die and why. Because it’d be nice to be alive during the Millennium, but you’d miss out on the Spirit World completely. I’m not sure if this is really what I want, but it might be lovely to die with Julie two days before Jesus comes again in a cloud and in glory. We wouldn’t know the experience of being changed in the twinkling of an eye. But if our kids were still small, we’d be able to raise them in Millennial peace, we as glorified beings, and they as translated children. That is, if we died without them. We could be a whole glorified family. But I think it’d be nice for them to have some earthiness to them still. And then Julie and I would be able to experience disembodied-ness, to know what it feels like to have been physical and then to lose it. We’d be able to see what spirits see and know what they know. But the disembodied, they say, view death as a bondage. There are certain things that come with physicality. Like kissing. As I knelt across the altar at the temple the other day and heard words spoken of the morning of first resurrection, I imagined that bright morning enjoying the party but wanting to sneak off to some corner apart in this bright universe to be alone with Julie—to hold each other and kiss again like new lovers, like newlyweds. Yes, yes, the party is fine. Yes, yes. But that first resurrected kiss. Ah.

And then, we’d reunite with our kids in the air. They’d come flying to the beaming warmth descending from the east. Their bodies quivering with joy. The very air singing. We’d fall on each others’ necks and weep and kiss and join the dazzling song. Then we’d descend to the newly renewed earth and raise them in a world without sin. What will that look like? These are the sorts of questions Lewis gets at in these books. What will all this really look like?

One Saturday I was reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to the kids. I would usually read at night to Em but we were getting to the part in which the White Witch kills Aslan, and I wanted to read it in the daytime. So Lydie joined us. She had read part of it before with Julie but couldn’t remember much, so Em and I caught her up. I was impressed with how much my golden-haired boy had retained. (Tonight as we finished the last chapter, we read about how they approached the green hill and saw the tops of trees whose leaves were silver and whose fruit was golden. Emerson told me, “Silver is kind of like gray, but it almost has sparkles in it.” Lydia asked, “Dad, do you like silver or gold better?” I told her I like silver because it is the color of my wedding ring and my ring reminds me that mom and I will be married forever. Emerson told me he likes gold better because his hair is golden.)

Emerson could tell his sister the whole story. And they get the idea that Aslan is a symbol for the Savior. Anyway, I was reading the part where Aslan goes to be sacrificed, and I was telling them that Aslan was stronger than the White Witch and stronger than the giants and dwarves and hags and cruels and spectres and everything there. I wanted them to know that Aslan only got killed because he let them kill him, just like Jesus. “Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels.” A Roman legion was six thousand soldiers. That would have been something to see: seventy-two thousand angels against a few men and boys with swords and staves. But the gentle, compassionate, powerful Son of God walked into their violent embrace. But as I was telling the kids all the people that Aslan was stronger than, Emerson looked at me wide-eyed and asked, “Is he even stronger than you?” Good to know that in his misperceptions, I am strong. (A sidenote on that note: One night I was reading the Sermon on the Mount to my kids, and I was telling them that I think Jesus is the best teacher who has ever lived, that I love the way He teaches. Emerson looked at me in wonder and asked, “Is he even a better teacher than you?” Oh, yes. Almost as strong as Aslan, and almost as good a teacher as Jesus. That’s me, Emerson’s dad. I love the misperceived world from his good son’s eyes.)

I finished reading The Voyage of the Dawn Treader a few months ago to Lydia and Emerson. It was a holy experience. I started crying as soon as Reepicheep throws away his sword, and I pretty much didn’t stop until several minutes after we finished the last page. While I was reading, Emerson sat up suddenly and pointed excitedly at the ceiling. “I see a cliff that the people jump off onto a bridge! And a penguin going off the bridge!” Lydie examined the ceiling and declared that she saw the same thing, except the cliff. Emerson clarified that the cliff went all the way up to the wall. Then she saw it. And another penguin. When we got to the part in the book where Aslan tells Lucy and Edmund they will not return to Narnia but will come to know him, Aslan, by another name in their own world, I turned with tears running down my cheeks to Lydia and asked, “Do you know what that name is?” All choked up, she replied, “Yes. Jesus.” Then she started to sob. When we closed the book, she curled into me and shook with sobs. Emerson stood up and looked at the two of us in tears. “I’m the only one who doesn’t have to cry for joy,” he said, and he ran downstairs to find The Silver Chair. Lydie and I lay snuggling each other and sniffling a little. I kissed her forehead and told her, “I love you.” She choked back in a small voice, “I love you, too.” Then, to make sure I heard it, she said it again, this time a little louder. A holy experience.

We watched Prince Caspian one night when Julie had to work. You remember how it ends with that sad, lovely song by Regina Spektor as Susan and Peter tell the Narnians goodbye for the last time—Aslan has told them they will not return. It’s a wonderful sadness captured in song and story. Just the right sadness. Well, as we were walking upstairs to brush our teeth, Emerson, all choked up says, “I’m just so sad that Susan and Peter will never go back to Narnia.” “I know,” I tell him, and he begins to sob, a heartfelt, sympathetic, wonderful, cathartic cry. I look at my small, sensitive child and my heart dances with gratitude. He is a boy after his father’s heart. How I love him.

I have loved reading these books with my children. The process was an exercise in waiting for Aslan. So many apparently mundane moments. And then the arrival of the Lion. A glint of mane, a scent, a sense. I think our lives are like that—we live sensing there is always something more, waiting for Aslan to breathe on us, to sing, to roar. We hurt inside and hurt each other and hurt ourselves, but then the Lion comes and none of that matters. Our broken pieces are picked up and somehow, miraculously mended. We follow Him, a parade of joy into a city of light. This is the morning.

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.

The Water's Edge

Friday night I held Eleanor’s small, perfect, pajama-clothed body against me to warm her and to be warmed by her as we stood outside on a rooftop and listened to human beings pour music out of their insides and out of their (mostly stringed) instruments. Ellie watched wide-eyed and happy. She cooed and sang and I felt her small head vibrate under my warm hands which perched atop her head in the attitude of blessing, covering her ears to muffle the sound and offering what heat or fire I could. The songs they sang were mostly about light and water. The water ones washed around my thoughts:

Now Jordan’s banks they’re red and muddy,

And the rolling water is wide.

But I got no boat, so I’ll be good and muddy,

When I get to the other side.

And when I pass through the pearly gate,

Will my gown be gold instead?

How many times did ancient Israelites cross the river Jordan into a new life, an unknown? Joshua’s priests, hoping against hope that this swelling spring river would stop when the soles of their feet hit the wetness. As a heap. Those priests carrying their precious ark got a little wet, a small splash on the robes, but the others passed over dry-shod to the unknown of those high walls of Jericho. A new life. Utterly different from the wilderness they had just left. Of course, their fathers had passed through the waters as well. From slavery to freedom. From relative comfort to uncertainty, too. And Elijah crossed that same river to board his chariot of fire, off to a life of certain light. A new and different ministry. But he left behind poor Elisha to pick up the mantle and cross back—lonely, confused, uncertain. He walked into a world of miracles, though. They usually did. And then the Savior walked into that river a carpenter’s obedient Son and walked out the very Son of God. Well, or so it seemed to His mystified neighbors.

And there was this song: Wade in the water. Wade in the water, children. God’s gonna trouble the water.

A man sat by the pool of Bethesda—the pool of the house of mercy—waiting for an angel to trouble the waters. Troubled waters bring healing. But the waters came to him. A woman sat by a well, cracked like the worn jar in her hands. The Son of God said to her, “If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.” How? You have nothing to draw with. “Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” This woman spoke with the embodiment of Living Waters. The waters had come to seep into and soothe her broken soul. “Give me this water.”

So, then, just this: Maybe the water meant so much because I had come to that music from the baptism of a student of mine—a bright, glistering, good young woman who has waited a long time for this. It was good for us to be there. Baptism is a death and a birth at the same time. Every crossing of the waters is. “Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?” But this burial is into life itself, not in earth or under stone, but we are immersed in water, enveloped in life. “Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” Newness of life. “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” To die into living waters and to emerge transformed. The very air is different.

I don’t know the quality of life we will enjoy in the next world, but I feel somewhat certain that it will be life “coupled with eternal glory, which glory we do not now enjoy.” There will likely exist certain parallels between this life and that—for life is life. But we will glow. We will know. Life elevated. Death will be a birth into a newness of life. Resurrection always follows a passing away.

So, too, I suppose that the quality of Shain’s life will change dramatically after being immersed in that font of living water. She will breathe differently. When she came mewling into this world and screamed her first breath of mortal air, she began to experience something unparalleled in her existence. From the light of God into this diffused, slanted earthly light. But now embodied. Able to hold a hand and to hug a friend. To smell the wispy fresh-washed hair of an infant. That former life surely held its glories. But without dying to that life, I could never have experienced this.

For the past two days, I have bathed in a flow of Spirit and words. I love living apostles and prophets. My heart has hummed and sung and glowed. This new life. This new life.

When I was born, I was given a new name and a family. Every birth provides these gifts. My name identifies, distinguishes, and associates me. Shain too received a new name at baptism. She took upon her the name of Jesus—distinguished from the darkness of the world by her new relationship with the Light of the World and associated with the fellowship of the Saints. This is a family of open arms. She will stumble as she begins to walk in newness of life. She will stutter as she speaks with the new tongue—the tongue of angels. But she will grow up in this new life. She has come to the water’s edge. And she has crossed. I have come to the water’s edge now several times. Every crossing brings death, cleansing, and a resurrection to newness.

Tastes Like Glory

My friends are famous rock stars. I am not. I am a father of four with a part in his hair who loves to sit on the front porch of an almost-autumn afternoon watching the bees hover and buzz around the flowers of green onions which sprang up of their own accord and which remind me that so much that is gifted to us in this life is unmerited. I am a father whose heart breaks into a thousand pieces—shatters with joy and love and longing—every single day. Rilke says that we live “forever taking our leave.” In the eighth Duino elegy, he writes:

And we: spectators, always, everywhere,

facing all this, never the beyond.

It overfills us. We arrange it. It falls apart.

We arrange it again, and fall apart ourselves.

Who has turned us around like this, so that

whatever we do, we find ourselves in the attitude

of someone going away? Just as that person

on the last hill, which shows him his whole valley

one last time, turns, stops, lingers—,

so we live, forever taking our leave.

What is it to live forever taking leave? I think Rilke is lamenting that we don’t walk recklessly, unencumbered into the eternal light—we are always and forever returned to this mortal world, we cannot get past it. But sometimes I think that I take my leave and take my leave because life is flowing always away from me. Because I perceive the light of each mortal moment. Facing the beyond of all this, I grant that no moment will linger. Everything flees and flies. And yet it is miracle. It is eternal, somehow. Marilynne Robinson writes, “So I have spent my life watching, not to see beyond the world, merely to see, great mystery, what is plainly before my eyes. I think the concept of transcendence is based on a misreading of creation. With all respect to heaven, the scene of miracle is here, among us.” Of course, she is quite familiar with the sage of Concord, who said that Jesus “spoke of miracles; for he felt that man’s life was a miracle, and all that man doth, and he knew that this daily miracle shines.” 

These daily miracles shine: Oliver crouching—squatting, really—like a small animal, tail end one inch away from the ground as he colors with many markers. He is slender and has a sly grin. Today he bent over the bushes as a cricket chirped: “I hear a small bird singing,” he said, “Where is it, daddy?” He will grow and will no longer squat. At what age do children lose the capacity to squat so without tiring? Hopefully he will still smile and love, but I mourn the passing as it happens. Each heartbreakingly beautiful moment is heartbreaking both in its beauty and in its transience. Today I found Emerson eating a mini peaches and cream pie made by my solicitous, gracious mother. He sat on a blanket in the middle of the kitchen floor and ate with such delight I felt like crying. Ellie has dark, piercing, intelligent eyes, and she smiles at me and stares sternly at me and opens her mouth to eat my face, and I melt. I melt. Several times since Eleanor was born, Emerson has come close up to her face and said, “Hi, Eleanor. I'm not a giant. I was just born before you.” The other day we were on a walk in our triple stroller and suddenly Emerson said, “I want to walk now, dad. Can I get out?” I stopped the stroller and he hopped out and climbed up onto the low brick wall structure at the entrance to the little complex where we live. He followed the curve of the wall and climbed up to the top--higher than my head. The he clambered down the other side, hopped off, and climbed back into the stroller. The image of him crawling up and then down the wall is strangely delightful to me. It seems to encompass something, something I want to record and bear witness of. I saw this. And it made my day. 

 From the time Lydia was born and I knew that kind of love that comes pouring into this world with a child’s birth—not romantic love, not friendship, not even just family love, but paternal, fatherly love—from the first time I wept while singing and holding her, I always knew she would flow away from me and leave a hole the size and shape of a very small and lovely girl in my soul. She will one day marry. She will date and I will worry. Yesterday, as we snuggled in her bed, she told me how she was made to zip up her lunchbox before she was done eating and run out of the school cafeteria because Keaton was chanting to Dylan, “Kiss Lydia! Kiss Lydia! On the lips!” She flees now and tells me these things to hear me laugh, but one day she will hate me and yell at me. But now she tells me she loves me—every single night. She gives me two hugs and two kisses before I leave her room. It is our ritual. She told me the other day, after taking the book I was reading her out of my hands and looking at it with an intent intensity that I have seen in pictures of myself reading, “I love reading. I can’t wait until Emerson and Oliver and Eleanor can read.” I love to see language come alive in her, words sparking and crackling with luminescence in her bright child mind.

There’s a song I love by Mason Jennings. “Where would I be right now if all my dreams had come true? Deep down I know somehow I’d have never seen your face. This world would be a different place. Darling, there’s no way to know which way your heart will go.” You should hear him sing it: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/boneclouds/id162459623

When I was young, I hoped I would grow up to be a rock star. My friend Jared and I made music videos long before we could play. I bought a beat-up old electric bass from a kid leaving on his mission for $100. He got a guitar for Christmas, I think. I didn’t have an amp or even a cord. We would plug his cord into his guitar and then not into an amplifier but into my bass, and we would jump on the trampoline with our guitars, pretending to play. We videotaped this.  

I loved the music scene: the broken, holy people who had hearts the size of small elephants and who looked like very prickly souls. I once watched a kid get thrown through a wall while we were playing. The hole was large. That was almost exactly twelve years ago, the Friday before the Wednesday that changed my life. Twelve years ago today, I left my little country of music and walked into the vast ocean of my ministry as a young missionary. While I learned Spanish and cried myself to sleep; while I sat on the bed in a one-room house of a small, beautiful Mexican family; while I rode my bicycle through rivers of street, my friends signed a record contract with a major label. One day, while I ate rice and beans and chicken, a smiling Mexican husband turned to his wife and said, “Sabe a gloria.” “It tastes like glory.” That felt right. Goodness, quietness, peace tasted like glory. And I liked the flavor. By the time I got back from Mexico, I knew what T.S. Eliot was getting at in his poem about the Magi: “We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, / But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, / With an alien people clutching their gods. / I should be glad of another death.” 

Once my feet again touched the ground and the sound of the choir faded, I called my old friend on the phone to see how life as a rock star felt. He told me that they had just played sold out shows throughout Japan. That the kids knew every word to their songs. I ran into the band, by this time part firmly in place in my hair. We hugged and talked. My friend said that he never imagined touring would be like this, and he pointed to his tour bus the size of Rhode Island. I might have felt a twinge of sadness then, of regret, perhaps, but there appeared in my mind a simple, dear picture. It was of me pointing upward. That was all. “What doth it profit a man . . .” rang in my thoughts.

Harold B. Lee, a gentle Idaho farmboy who grew up to be a prophet of God, wrote, “You may know you are living a full, rich life when you have the real joy of living, for ‘men are, that they might have joy’ (2 Nephi 2:25). What is it, then, that gives you that high emotional ecstasy called joy? Does it come from the unusual or does it come from common things? He who is moved thus only by the unusual is as one who must flag a failing appetite with strong spices and flavorings that destroy the true sense of taste. You are making a serious error if you mistake an emotional thrill that passes with the moment for the upsurge of deep feelings that is the joy of living. If one feels strong surges of happiness and desire from the quiet of a happy home, from the unfolding of a beautiful life, from the revelation of divine wisdom, or from a love for the beautiful, the true and good, he is having a taste of the fulness of the joy that the living of a rich, full life only can bring.” That’s a nice thought.

Jesus once said something that I did not understand until very recently. Perhaps I still don’t. He was always saying enigmatic, mystical, wonderful things. He is my favorite teacher. I love Him. He said, “The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.” For those familiar with the revelations to Joseph Smith, the idea of a singleness of eye reminds us of that marvelous phrase “an eye single to the glory of God,” an eye focused on the essential, the true, the godly. When my mother-in-law was a young mother, and my wife was a young girl, they were going through the nighttime ritual, preparing for sleep. My mother-in-law was impatient to finish the routine so she could watch a television show that she loved. Then a thought arose, or fell, perhaps, upon her. It was essentially that in eternity, she would not regret not having seen that show, but she might lament not taking time with this holy, bright child. She wept and determined not to sacrifice essential things for things that hold no value. She would lay up her treasures in heaven. After the girls were asleep, she went to tell her husband that she did not want to have television in her house. At all. She wanted her eye single. I love that story, because I see what it did. Not only did it fill her whole being with a radiant, infectious light, but that light has been the fruit that my wife was raised on. And now she is filled with light. And it tastes like glory.

So now I sit on my front porch and contemplate the grace that descended on my life, and I notice the watermelon vine snaking among the green onions. This, too, was not planted by my hand. We imagine that someone spit a watermelon seed into the front flower patch sometime during the summer. Now, the leafy plant winds around the entire garden, putting forth buds. There are at least five small watermelons on that vine. That seems like a metaphor to me. He who once spit in dirt to heal a blind man can take spit and folly and brokenness and carelessness and make beauty and grace and bright, red, juicy fruit. And I love Him for it. And I praise His grace. And it tastes like glory. 

Alma Mater

("Halo Repair" by Brian Kershisnik)

When I was a young boy, my mother read to me every night. She sang the world to me. She told me the stories that created my being. Every act of mothering is sacred. And every mother is a minister in the highest, holiest sense of the word, because every mother spends her life immersed in brilliant charity. When the Savior walked this lovely, dusty, weary, green planet, He elevated seemingly insignificant acts of service to a godly level. “But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant” (Matthew 23:11). I still marvel at the gentle selflessness my mother appears to have inherited from her mother, and I stand astonished at the greatness of my wife’s mother-soul—her willingness to give of herself, to gift her time, her love, her strength. How many of a mother’s everyday activities are exalted because they are the shadows of the very actions of the mortal Son of God? How often have I watched my wife wash small feet and thought of that last night Jesus spent with His closest friends in that warm upper room?

Often I’ve seen her bending over a bathtub to perform sacred ablutions for my lithe, holy children.

I saw the world anew today

Holiness written on every forehead
First morning
Morning stars
Morning songs of praise

My wife bathed my three holy children today

Anointed their heads with shampoo

Washed them with water

Clothed them in towels

Draped like robes

Oh, the holy

And I have watched four times in stunned powerless awe as she gave birth. That act seems as close to the saving act of the Atonement as anything I’ve ever witnessed. To suffer and to bleed so that another might have life. Isn’t that the very essence of Christ’s offering? David O. McKay, that gentle prophet whose devoted love for his wife Emma blessed the whole church, once said, “Motherhood is the one thing in all the world which most truly exemplifies the God-given virtues of creating and sacrificing. Though it carries the woman close to the brink of death, motherhood also leads her into the very realm of the fountains of life and makes her co-partner with the Creator in bestowing upon eternal spirits mortal life.”

Each mother has offered her body—has experienced discomfort and disfigurement and deep pain—so that others might live. Thinking of this one day, I wrote this poem. It’s called “Stretchmarks.”

Something holy happened here;

something sacred slept.

a luminescence brought to light—

premortal promise kept.

She wept, and as she strained,

in pain, to introduce to earth

pre-resurrection miracle:

this angelsong-bright birth.

Motherhood is not always popular, praised, or applauded in contemporary society. But it seems like Jesus’s priorities are more often than not at odds with the attitudes and foci of the world and culture that swirls around us. The things that matter most seem to be the quiet, simple things of everyday life: stories and songs and laughter and family and kindness and the beauty of the world and the lives of little ones. I suppose that motherhood ranks fairly high among these gentle, lovely, holy things. Neal Maxwell once said, “When the real history of mankind is fully disclosed, will it feature the echoes of gunfire or the shaping sound of lullabies? The great armistices made by military men or the peacemaking of women in homes and neighborhoods? Will what happened in cradles and kitchens prove to be more controlling than what happened in congresses? When the surf of the centuries has made the great pyramids so much sand, the everlasting family will still be standing, because it is a celestial institution, formed outside telestial time. The women of God know this.”

So much of a mother’s life may seem uninteresting and unimpressive. But those who have eyes to see perceive. She is a healer. She is a creator. She is a teacher. When you think about what the Savior spent His mortal life doing, it seems like He did a whole lot of what I watch my wife do every day, and what I took for granted almost every day of my growing up years. He fed people. All the time. How often have I sat down to eat a meal that appeared on my table as if by miracle? Every meal offered by every mother at every table every night is a holy thing. Every meal is a chance for communion, a nourishing, a grace.

Even all the laundry that piles up and smells and needs to be folded and returned to closets. Even this is holy. Clothing in scripture is a symbol of covenant. And Jesus Christ was the first one to provide clothes for the newly distraught and naked Adam and Eve. One day our robes will be washed white in the blood of the Lamb. Until then, praise be to the mothers who keep us covered. The Hebrew word for cover, kaphar, is also the word translated as “atonement.”

When the Divine Mind sought for a perfect metaphor to express the love and devotion of the Savior for the inhabitants of this bruised, broken, blessed world, He came up with this: “As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you; and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem.” He is the mother hen who would gather her chickens under her wings, who would give herself for the life of her brood.

As I snuggled you this morning in our bed,

I snuggled, too, two other hearts you made.

The one, our son, lay between us,

His fevered heart pounding.

I felt it through his unzipped pajamas

And thought of David and Absalom.

No wonder that father wept so.

Thank you for giving me a love like this.

The other heart, smaller, faster, fainter—

Still beating like bird wings under the umbrella

Of your strong, stable, mother-bird heart

What a blessed child to have you for mother.

Life within life. Light within light.

All these loves within the love we share.

On our kitchen counter,

The evidence of your bright hands’ work:

Sustaining bread, children’s homework, and

This paper profusion of hearts.

Symbol of your life-giving, love-quickening power.

Four times I have watched in utter powerlessness as my wife has performed the ordinance of childbirth: the desire to help, the inability to do. Just as the Father had to allow the Son to suffer alone on the cross, the gift of agony that brings life is a solitary struggle. The mother is alone with the babe to be born, the new universe to be brought forth.

Her scream was a song

As she sang you to light

People speak of birth—almost flippantly—as a miracle

Almost like a magic trick,

With a wave of a wand

And Voila! See it!

But if you’ve seen it,

You know it's not like that.

It is a miracle in the most expansive sense—

A grace

A mercy

The miracle is your mother—

The pain she bore to bear you,

The grace she gave to give you air:

Divine means of help or strength

Every father knows the impotent vigil

Of prayer and powerlessness

Hope in a power beyond

Trust in lovingkindness

Love for the one who sacrifices to give life

How many times is Jesus likened unto a mother

In scripture?

No better image.