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.

Memory as Revelation

This evening I was shucking corn with my two-year-old son (“shucking corn”—that’s something you should hear my two-year-old say; you should pretty much hear him say anything; his bright, laughing eyes and water-clear voice dazzle me). And suddenly a ray of memories shone down: the first time I shucked corn. I was maybe six or seven, sitting on the lawn outside my best friend, Cache’s, house. His mom sat on a chair and taught me how to shuck corn and peel off the strings. I remember being concerned about the strings. She sang songs: “Go Tell Aunt Rodie” and “There’s a Hole in the Bucket.” It was the first time I had ever heard those songs, and they were strange and interesting to me. Music stirs memories like almost nothing else. Songs can transport me.

Another time this week memory came like revelation. I was driving home with my family from my grandmother’s funeral in California and it was raining outside and suddenly (that’s the word—suddenly) a smell came from outside. It was a mixture of summer rain and road and maybe air conditioning and something else. But it smelled just like a t-shirt I loved as a kid. I hadn’t thought about that t-shirt for years. A bright yellow Bart Simpson shirt. Man, I loved that shirt. Steinbeck writes, “The memory of odors is very rich.” And that is true. To this day certain smells convey me in time and being to another, earlier version of myself. The smell of fall and books brings back-to-school butterflies. And there’s this smell, a mixture of heat and meat and street that takes me to Mexico, to the feelings of my mission. The smell of dead dog takes me there, too, but with less fondness.

I’ve often wondered what heaven will smell like. Maybe honeysuckle. We had a honeysuckle bush outside my door when I was a kid. We have one now. Heaven might smell like that. Or my wife’s cinnamon rolls. That’s a smell I could abide for eternity. Or just summer rain. Or babies’ hair. Or caramels. I think the land of Canaan was said to flow with milk and honey because those are the ingredients for caramel—the flavor of paradise. Forget Wonka’s chocolate river; heaven’s rivers run caramel.

I’ve thought a lot about the power of memory. Just before he died, Jesus told his disciples that he would send a Comforter. Then he tells them that the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, will bring all things to their remembrance. So memory is a form of revelation, the way it overtakes us and seizes us and spirits us away. Memory, like music, is evidence to me that I have a soul, an inexplicable foray into the eternal. Linear time is so once-centered, but memory brings a sense of timelessness: a moment can return, and with it a whole series of emotions and feelings. The connectedness between remembering and feeling seems evidence of the holy nature of memory. God's voice can speak to me through memory. I believe that. Often it’s the memory of mortal joy—as we spoke of memory one day in a class I was teaching, one student told me of a tree she used to love and how she wept when they cut it down. There was genuine feeling in her telling. Her memory sparked one in me and I was taken to the orchard across the street from my childhood home. There was this tree that had this almost-throne at the top—three prongs of a branch all growing out then up. I would sit up in that seat on top of the world and feel mighty, brave, and gleefully alone. Another student told me of a day in Oregon when she played all day at the beach with her cousins and they found this sort of platform. It was heaven for her. It was a heartbreakingly lovely memory of human happiness, the kind of thing I think we'll look back on with great affection in the next life. The best memories usually involve communion—laughter and love and all that. But we remember pain, too, that we might have the wisdom to enjoy. Well, it’s a remarkable thing.