Enosian Prayer

If we were to walk to the North Pole and find the word happiness there, I wonder what we would conclude about the word located at its polar opposite. Some might think to find sadness or misery there. Young people, I'm sure, would suggest boredom. A healthy and vigorous person consulting his shadow-self might write down disease or confinement. Others would agree with grief or sorrow. A lonely person might whisper regret. I think that all these suppositions are wrong.

In truth, happiness embraces all of these words and is able to incorporate them into itself. People who have lived long and wisely—without exception—have within them some unending grief, some sorrow that does not dissipate. There are always regrets—often profound—and weepings for the sins of the world. And still every Christian soul knows a happiness that infuses and permeates all of these soulful emotions.

The polar opposite of happiness is to live without God in the world—to be cast out of His presence into a region scripture refers to as Outer Darkness. We come to happiness by entering Divine Presence and finding our welcome there. The Psalms, the Poets and the hymnody of the Church all proclaim that God alone is enough; that only in God is the soul at rest; that God alone is our joy. Man’s search for happiness is nothing more or less than man’s search for God.

In the dark ages of time, we forget this truth. Our search for happiness focuses on self rather than on God. Even a prophetic people can succumb to a fashionable flight to self: we begin to speak of “our prophet” instead of Almighty God’s prophet—which a prophet must be if he is to be any prophet at all. We prefer to set goals rather than keep commandments. New ideals are rooted in imported soil. We invite, for example, the Olympic Ideal into our life. The Olympics celebrate a Greek but not a Christian ideal of the body as a temple. The Christian concept that St. Paul counters with is that the body is a temple if—and only if—the Spirit of God is dwelling there. The pagan concept, which is the model of the Olympics as well as the marketing hypothesis of a consumer society, is that the body is a temple in and of itself, without reference to what dwells within. People who lose focus on Divine Presence mistake the temple or chapel or sanctuary with the barroom of a fraternal lodge. Such a colossal mistake inexorably puts us in polar opposition to happiness

All that I have to offer as a counter to these imported ideals is the image of the soul in prayer. Many people find it difficult to mature spiritually and that is why this image is a good one. Prayer is where push-comes-to-shove in the battle to grow up spiritually. Obviously, it is possible for an emotionally immature spirit to dwell in an old body. We all know people with whom we find it so. The same thing can happen in spiritual realms—indeed, it is far more likely to occur in spiritual life. St. Paul said, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways (1 Corinthians 13:11 NRSV).” In other words, to enter the Kingdom of God it is as necessary for us “to grow up [in the Lord]” as it is for us to become like little children in the first place.

The more mature a person is spiritually, the greater their ability to remain single-minded in the search for God. Quick to forgive, slow to take offense, a spiritually minded man will not waver in his attempt to find God—he will not be double-minded and unstable is his ways. He is like a mariner fixed upon the North Star of God’s love. For him, prayer coincides with the Seafarer’s use of the sextant—it is the sure way to continually regain our bearings and measure our progress as we sail homeward. The image of a man in prayer is important because we drift off course and are lost in the regions of storm without it. There is an earnest need for us to fathom the depths of prayer privately and in our ritual Sabbath gatherings.

Little children—and new converts metaphorically are little children fed upon gospel milk and not meat—are taught a prayer formula (and that is part of the metaphor). I am sure all of us are familiar with it:

Address our Heavenly Father
Thank Him for our blessings
Ask Him for what we need
Close in the name of Jesus Christ.

There is however an apostolic directive that every church member sooner or later is obligated to accept. It is found in the tract Paul addressed to the Hebrews.

“For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. (Hebrews 5:12 – 14 KJV)

The time had come for Hebrew Saints to be teachers of the Word, but instead Paul was frustrated that they still needed to be taught the basics! In other words, they had not matured spiritually. Paul then continues:

“Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God. (Hebrews 6:1 JST).”

The way we go on from something and at the same time not leave it behind is to take it with us as we go. I would like to encourage us to take these first principles of prayer along with us but to also move on, to mature in our understanding of what constitutes deep prayer and to improve the devotional aspects of our character as we live out Christian lives. I’m going to make a few suggestions of things we might do to both broaden and deepen our concepts of prayer.

I think most Latter-day Saints recognize that the Book of Enos that forms a part of the Book of Mormon compilation is primarily about prayer, so let’s begin with the writings of Enos.

“I will tell you of the wrestle which I had before God, before I received a remission of my sins. Behold, I went to hunt beasts in the forests; and the words which I had often heard my father speak concerning eternal life, and the joy of the saints, sunk deep into my heart. And my soul hungered; and I kneeled down before my Maker, and I cried unto him in mighty prayer and supplication for mine own soul (Enos 1:2 - 4).”

The very first thing that Enos tells us is that there are obstacles to deep and meaningful prayer. Given the fact that he is going to describe prayer as “the wrestle…had before God,” I think we can safely conclude that the wild beasts Enos went to hunt in the forest were metaphorical creatures—demons in his soul that sought to distract him from prayer—the evil spirits we all have to wrestle with, isolate and overcome. Other passages in latter-day scripture tell a similar tale. Nephi writes about an evil spirit that teaches a man he must not pray (2 Nephi 32:8). This is the spirit that attempts to bind young Joseph’s tongue in the sacred grove (JS-History 1:15-16) and anyone who attempts to deepen her own prayer will have to wage a similar battle.

There is another principle in these verses—we are back in Enos now—that reveal the path we must travel if we wish a deeper life of prayer. There is a phrase that suggests contemplation is essential element of prayer and we will see that many other passages of scripture will confirm the suggestion. Enos tells his reader “the words which I had often heard my father speak concerning eternal life and the joy of the saints sunk deep into my heart” and produced in him a profound hunger. Prayer began to come from a deeper place inside of him. This idea of contemplation is something we come against again and again in the sacred records—Nephi, for example, contemplating the words of his father when his own magnificent vision is opened to him. But it is this idea of words sinking deep into the heart that I want to emphasize.

We are all aware of the passage from James that inspired Joseph Smith to pray. What I would like to call attention to is the Prophet’s description of the effect this passage had on him.

“Never did any passage of scripture come with more power to the heart of man than this did at this time to mine. It seemed to enter with great force into every feeling of my heart. I reflected on it again and again (Pearl of Great Price, JS-History 1:12).”

I think of this as a baptism of the intellect—a supernatural act of grace. A passage of scripture suddenly speaks to its student in a heretofore unique and powerful way. It is cognized in the mind, but the weight of it acts like a plumb bob: an intellectual concept that has been formed in the mind sinks into the font of the heart and is immersed in love. This is the moment when Enosian Prayer—the type of prayer described by Enos—truly begins. The normal walls of partition disappear and we find ourselves in the presence of God.

For most of us, Enosian prayer will always involve and will often begin with spiritual reading. But this is a very different kind of reading than the reading we do when we are up against a deadline—trying to finish the Book of Mormon before the end of the year for example—a good thing perhaps, but insufficient as a means of prayer. The kind of reading we do as a part of Enosian or contemplative prayer is not for distance but for depth. We read until a passage speaks to us—as the Quakers would say, speaks to our condition. Then we stop. We do what Nephi and Enos and Joseph Smith did. We reflect upon it again and again—slowly, contemplatively. If you haven’t experienced this kind of reading before, do so now. Take Joseph Smith’s well-worn verse, for example, and repeat it slowly in your mind for a full minute or to as a start:

If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God.

What happens when you reflect on a passage this way? Alma offers a detailed description that comes from his own attempt to replicate this experiment.

“Now, [I] will compare the word unto a seed. Now, if ye give place, that a seed may be planted in your heart, behold, if it be a true seed, or a good seed, if ye do not cast it out by your unbelief, that ye will resist the Spirit of the Lord, behold, it will begin to swell within your breasts; and when you feel these swelling motions, ye will begin to say within yourselves—It must needs be that this is a good seed, or that the word is good, for it beginneth to enlarge my soul; yea, it beginneth to enlighten my understanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me (Alma 32:28).”

In contemplative prayer—the word literally means to think in a way appropriate to the temple—is a way to plant the word into the soil of your heart—another way to describe the baptism of intellect. And once the Word of God takes root, it begins to grow.

I think it is worth pointing out here that the imagery Alma employs in describing the effects of planting the seed deep in our hearts is not only sensual, it is erotic.

The seed swells, sprouts and begins to grow. We become, so-to-speak, pregnant with God’s word.

And as the process begins, it begins to swell within our breasts and we will feel those swelling motions.

The seed we have planted within us—the Word of God—is being transformed. When it is fully formed within us it becomes a tree—a very significant tree, the Tree of Life (Alma 32: 40-42).

In the New Testament, Mary is the model for all of this. As the story of Jesus begins, it is Mary who has the divine seed—the Word of God made flesh—planted within her. It is Mary who brings forth the Son of God—a being who when nailed to the cross fulfills for Christians the imagery of the Tree of Life. In the Gospels—and especially in Luke—Mary is presented as the archetype of Christian discipleship. This is true in many ways, but she powerfully models deep, contemplative prayer. Twice we are told in the 2nd chapter of Luke that Mary “kept” the angelic sayings and pondered them “in her heart.”

Alma’s description of contemplative prayer encourages us to continue the imagery and symbols of covenant love into our daily life—the imagery of bride and bridegroom in the marriage chamber. Like Mary, we allow the Word to be planted within us. We do not resist the Spirit of the Lord. We let desire work within us. We allow a place for the seed to grow—a womb, if you will. We do not abort the Word or cast it away.

In all of this, we have not left behind the first principles of prayer. We still call upon the Father, but in a more profound and heartfelt way. We thank Him for the blessing of His Word by planting that Word deep within us—nourishing it with great care, reflecting upon it again and again. We exercise faith that the seed is a good seed and will grow into the Tree of Life inside us by saying, along with Mary, yes to the wonders it proposes. We ask that it might be so, that we too may continue to pluck and enjoy the fruit within us. And all of this is in the name of Jesus—the divine lover of the human soul.

Much of our reading is abortive because our ground is barren and uncultivated. It is barren because we will not say our let-it-be to God and open ourselves to Him. We do not allow Him to behold His handmaiden. We do not make time or place within us for courtship and the planting of His Word. We do not nourish the attempt. When daily prayer is not anchored to the Word of God, Divine Presence is too abstract an idea for us to conceive. We behave in the temple or chapel as we would in a bawdyhouse and the Lord is turned away. Enosian Prayer is the type of deep prayer that scripture describes—a marriage between prayer and the written word—that allows for a deeper divine union to take place, the at-one-ment of spiritual love.

Contrary to the marginalia in Joseph’s Bible, the Song of Solomon is one of the most inspired and relevant books in the Hebrew text in that it speaks directly to the woeful lack of reverence among the Latter-day Saints. Without the devotion, the passion and the fervor of divine love, obedience cannot rise above the level of political adherence. We need to become passionate lovers of the Lord, with a hungry desire to please and to be taken by Him. At the very least, we should reconsider this neglected metaphor that I am trying to set before us again.

Invocations

Invocations
Written for my children

I say to Imagination,
let your kingdom come.
Let me see a thousand prodigals
rush down the gullies and into my arms.
Let the earth feel the sharp rocks
drop from their hands like hailstones.

I turn to the Image Nation
Christ calls forth renewing.
Let my flesh unlatch prison doors
and rejoice when Forgiveness runs free.
Let me hear the hammering of swords
and smell the tilling of the earth
and be the lamb I wish to be.

New Year's Eve - 1999

New Year’s Eve - 1999
(for Maggie with admiration)

You reach into the closet
and I feel the old anxiety—
so mythic a dimension:

a place of disappearances
where Jews and true natures hide.

a place where skeletons
and disordered affections are kept.

the place Jesus wants us to enter
and pray more earnestly.

You reach into asymmetry
and bring out a winter coat
that will warmly embrace you.

Christmas Foil

Christmas Foil_______________


In sleep there is a tender Branch
that warms the air with mint,
with roots that reach into my heart
and shoulder Government—
a Sabbath in the midnight hours,
the Christmas star for me,
psalms reflected in pools of light
and snow upon the Sea.

The chorus whisper in the loft
the wind upon the beam
the candle flame beside my bed
a Pentecost of Dream.
And Ships of Three upon the Sea
the Vesper spell has won—
and Christ is coming to the earth
and war will be undone.

Epitaph

______Epitaph______

Even this stone
will be shaped by wind and sea.

I am the ephemeral one late of moonlit village.

Hymns thunder on in
other deep-throated cathedrals

I have met the fate of echoes.

I abide with Thee.

Jacob

Close heaven’s door
bolt it tight and this
is a stone. You cannot
plough into it and plant.
You cannot soar, swim,
or dive therein. It is
a stone.

Reject it.

Jacob put one on top
of the other and built
an altar to God.
In the burns he accepted
a stone for a pillow…
and dreams like water—
like Lazarus—came forth.

The Silence We Are Talking About

When we think about silence, Latter-day Saints almost always think in apocalyptic terms. We take special note of the 3 ½ hours of silence that precede the ultimate upheaval of nature, when corruption prevails on earth causing a dreadful silence to reign in heaven (Revelation 8:1-5, Doctrine & Covenants 38:11-12).

But there are two types of silence talked about in scripture. There is this silence in heaven that corresponds with the indifference of men on earth, when the heavens over our head becomes as brass because the hearts of men on earth have become hard as iron (Deuteronomy 28:23). There is also the silence of the human soul responding to the nearness of God and the approach of His kingdom. Silence in heaven signals the hardening of God’s heart—He is no longer listening to us. Silence of the soul reflects the breaking and softening of our own hearts. It is a token that we are beginning to listen. Thus this saying from Habakkuk, “The Lord is in His holy temple, let all the earth keep silence before Him (2:20).” The Lord Almighty whispers to King David, “Be still and know that I am God (Psalm 46:10).” “Keep silent before me…and let the people renew their strength (Isaiah 41:1).” This is the silence that we should welcome into our sacred meetings.

Scripture speaks of inappropriate behavior on sacred occasions as revelry and rioting. When the people of God refused to follow the prophet up the mountain, they eventually grew tired of waiting for him and demanded that Aaron make them a golden calf for worship. God was aware of the hullabaloo below and sent the prophet back. As Moses and his counselors approached the people, the noise of revelry reached their ears.

“And when Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said unto Moses, There is a noise of war in the camp. And he said, It is not the voice of them that shout for mastery, neither is it the voice of them that cry for being overcome: but the noise of them that sing do I hear (Exodus 32:17 - 18).”

The affront of revelry is best defined, I think, in the Book of Mormon as, “making…merry…with much rudeness”—such merriment is evidence that the revelers have forgotten “the power that has brought them hither (1 Nephi 18:9).”

Common behavior among Gentiles, such merriment was particularly abhorrent during meals—a meal having a sacred connotation in the Hebrew tradition. “Be not among winebibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh” became a proverb of special circumstance and meaning to early Christians who found it necessary to guard against a tendency to turn the Lord’s Supper into mere social occasion (Proverbs 23:20). This was especially true for St. Paul and others who took the Gospel into Greek cultural settings.

“I find that you bring divisions to worship—you come together, and instead of eating the Lord’s Supper, you bring a lot of food from the outside and make pigs of yourselves. Some are left out and go home hungry. Others have to be carried out, too drunk to walk. I can’t believe it! Don’t you have your own homes to eat and drink in? Why do you stoop to desecrating God’s church? Why do you actually shame God’s poor? I never would have believed you would stoop to this. And I’m not going to stand by and say nothing (1 Corinthians 11:20-22, The Message).

What Paul finds appalling is the way in which a sacred gathering has been permitted to degenerate into a mere social occasion. These Christians in Corinth were not coming together to meet the Lord as much as they were coming together to meet, impress and flatter one another, to correlate, back-slap and exchange the myths people tell about themselves. Once again, the people of God were willing to send a prophet up the hill—this time Jesus to Golgotha—while they stayed far back and enjoyed a bit of revelry.

And now, once again, noise in coming from the camp—and it is not the noise of those who strive for spiritual mastery, not the noise of those who engage in spiritual warfare, but the noise of those who make themselves merry with much rudeness.

Silence is not the absence of noise so much as the absence of our noise. Silence happens when we put ourselves into the Light of God. There are many Christian disciplines that ought to be done in silence once we have placed ourselves in the Light—things to do as we enter the chapel and take our seats, during the prelude—things we should be doing while the emblems of our Lord’s suffering and death are being taken to the congregation. In the next column, we’ll talk about these spiritual disciplines.

It seems that we have forgotten the power that has brought us here. We have forgotten our Lord’s prophecy of the unseen presence in our midst. If we accept Jesus’ promise to be present when we are gathered together in His name, then I suggest that we adopt the practice of contemplative silence when we come together to partake of the Lord’s Supper. That is, after all, what Paul told those merry Saints of Corinth to do.

The Unseen Presence of Frederick Chopin

I have promised a few thoughts on the need for silence in our meetings and I will produce them in a day or two. In the meantime, I thought we would better understand the need for silence if we first considered the idea of the unseen Presence promised us by Jesus (Matthew 18:20). My first thought was of how Emily Dickinson’s deep sense of things included the unseen Presence. Before turning to my thoughts on silence, I also want to tell you about a deep and soulful ritual celebrated in Poland every week at the birthplace of Frederick Chopin.

I once enjoyed a documentary by Bryon Janis that traced the composer’s life. As his film begins, we hear a sad and melencholy piece being played on a grand piano. A performer is seen in silhouette only. The narrative voice informs viewers that every Sunday a recital is given in this house. The unnamed performer remains unseen as the music drifts out the open doors and windows of the home. The camera takes the viewer along one such path and out into the surrounding park. An audience has gathered here and they are listening with rapt attention. Several have close their eyes, disembodying the music even further. It is a moment of transcendent biography. Here we sit on the grass, outside the birthplace of the great man, his melodic and soulful music pouring out the open windows and doors of his birthplace. This place and the unseen presence of the musician, who is after all only an actor playing Chopin, highlight the question: What was really born into the world on March 1, 1810? The question will loom large in our own souls, but only if we are truly listening.

The Unseen Presence of Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson is a difficult poet for Christians because she nurtures a response to life many wish to be done with. Hers is a deliberately less sure word of prophecy and we cannot explain her choice. We would solve the mystery the poet would promote. People who prefer the certain sound of a trumpet have little patience with the sputtering sounds of telegraphic code that typify her verse.

Christians were as difficult for her. Emily thought certain people among them profane. “They talk of hallowed things out loud,” she wrote to Higginson, “and embarrass my dog.” The convinced express gratitude for trifles, she thought, while leaving the best unacknowledged. “The unknown is the largest need of the intellect, though for it no one thinks to thank God.”

As a Christian, I find myself in the middle of the debate. Because I cannot write to her, I'll write to us instead. Emily Dickinson’s case for the unseen and unknown ought to be heard. A premature rush to certitude is condemned not only by the poet, but by prophets too. Time and experience are enjoined. Beyond this, there is an aesthetic element to shadows behind the veil. Without a sense of mystery, life is diminished. Emily enjoyed mortality for the dark valley it is. Ignorance, after all, is the greater part of life no matter the spiritual assurance. What is essential to salvation may be discerned—but what is essential to awe and wonder is the unseen presence.

One can see in Emily Dickinson’s writings a brave attempt to restore the unknown to a place of honor in Western religion. With new wine, she burst the bottles of hymnal form from within, adapted biblical imagery to suit her own sense of the sacred, invoked a haunting presence and lived her life in cloistered tribute to the Invisible God. Each contribution deserves a separate consideration.

Hymnal Form

In 1955, Thomas Johnson published a three-volume critical edition of Emily’s poetry. In addition to providing variant textual readings, Johnson’s work restored the poet’s original line constructions. It became clear that Emily had employed the well-worn hymn forms of Isaac Watts as a structure for many of her poems. Given her unconventionality as a poet, Dickinson’s choice of a puritanical construct as an enclosure for her eccentric concepts is significant. Why pour new wine into these old bottles?

Watts made use of a poetic form that established pauses and allowed a congregation of untrained voices to catch their breath. Consider the hymn, “Sweet Is the Work.”

Sweet is the work, my God, my King [pause]
To praise thy name, give thanks and sing, [pause]
To show thy love by morning light, [pause]
And talk of all thy truths at night. [long pause]

Emily Dickinson defied the convenience of the arrangement.

321

Of all the sounds dispatched abroad, [pause]
There’s not a charge to me
Like the old measure in the Boughs – [pause]
That phaseless Melody
The wind does – [pause] working like a Hand,
Whose fingers Comb the Sky –
The quiver down – with tufts of tune – [pause]
Permitted Gods, and me.

This is what Anthony Hecht means when he says that Dickinson “violates the integrity of the hymnal form…with a great deal of force.” We are made to read through the established pauses. Structure is no longer containing content.

I willed my keepsakes – [pause] Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable – [pause] and then it was
There interposed a Fly –

With blue – uncertain stumbling Buzz –
Between light – and me – [pause]
And then the Windows failed – [pause] and then
I could not see –

(From # 465)

The new wine is bursting old bottles and that is the poet’s point. The unseen and unknown cannot be encased. They are the wild sea for which Emily expressed a preference.

Wild Nights – Wild Nights!
Were I with thee
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!

Futile – the Winds –
To a Heart in Port –
Done with the Compass –
Done with the Chart!

Rowing in Eden - Ah, the Sea!
Might I but moor – Tonight –
In Thee!

To a poet out at sea, winds produce the needed wildness, Winds are of no benefit, however, to those who are done with the voyage and rest safe in the harbor of a known God. Better to anchor in an open and wild sea.

Adaptation of Biblical Imagery

The Bible, to Emily, was a lexicon of images more than words, and ‘lexicon’ was her word for ‘beloved companion.’ In contemplation of content, she became familiar with those complexities and intricacies that deepen her sense of Presence. Too much definition removed the Bible’s prophetic pages from sacred Proximity. She would rather our attention be upon its invocation.

1545

The Bible is an antique Volume -
Written by faded Men
At the suggestion of Holy Spectres –
Subjects – Bethlehem
Eden – the ancient Homestead –
Satan – the Brigadier –
Judas – the Great Defaulter –
David – the Troubadour –
Sin – a distinguished Precipice
Others must resist –
Boys that “believe” are very lonesome –
Other boys are ‘lost’ –
Had but the Tale a warbling Teller –
All the boys would come –
Orpheus’ Sermon captivated –
It did not condemn –

This idea of the Bible needing a “warbling Teller” is central to her poetic concept of scripture. To “warble” is to sing with a trill. ‘Trill’ is a fluttering of tremulous sound and ‘tremulous’ is defined as vibrating, quivering and trembling. In other words: an uncertain and indistinct sound. She is interested in the spell the Biblical tale casts upon its recipients, a charm removed by too much definition. She corrects our Lord’s brother (James 2:10).

Whosoever disenchants
A single Human soul
By failure if irreverence
Is guilty of the whole.

(From # 1451)

Of course, this poetic perception of scripture receives as little hearing from our own peers as from Emily’s. Joseph Fielding McConkie expresses the prosaic point of view rather well in an address he gave at a symposium held at Brigham Young University. The text being studied is the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible, and McConkie had been assigned Psalms, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. “I am far too good a sport,” he announces, “to mention that [my colleagues] ate the steak and left me the soup bone.” His time will not be wasted, he consoles himself, since the Prophet had spent time “in the poetic books [and made] what was a desert blossom as a rose.” He explains his antipathy to these books as he brings his lecture to a close. “All scripture is not of equal worth.” We learn from “the abuse of the poetic writings [Joseph Smith] sought to correct, [not to] establish doctrine from poetry.” Poetry “may be used to sustain good doctrine, but only after that doctrine has been plainly established in [the prose] of unambiguous revelation.” A quick analysis of the assumptions behind McConkie’s statement makes it clear that now—as it was then—a prosaic approach to scripture is an attempt to establish certainty. This is the orthodox tradition. Scriptures are “answer books” to the cosmic questions of life.

Emily Dickinson was of another tradition entirely, a tradition that does not assume revelation is necessarily unambiguous; a tradition in which poetic images and symbols are vessels of numinous Presence and divine authenticity. Rather than provide answers, they provide the soul with transport and provoke wonder and awe.

569

I reckon – when I count at all –
First – Poets – Then the Sun –
Then Summer – Then the Heaven of God –
And then – the List is done –

But, looking back – the First so seems
To Comprehend the Whole –
The Others look a needless Show –
So I write – Poets – All –

Their Summer – lasts a Solid Year –
The can afford a Sun
The East – would deem extravagant –
And if the Further Heaven –

Be Beautiful as they prepare
For Those who worship Them –
It is too difficult a Grace –
To justify the Dream –

By Orthodox reckoning—and they count all the time—this poem is a simple blasphemy, putting poets before the Sun. Poets, she explains, “can afford a Sun the East would deem too extravagant.” While poets place heaven on earth, the Orthodox, prosaic placement is in the “Further Heaven”—a placement that is “too difficult a Grace.” Real grace is found in the poetic realization of the unseen Presence.

Elsewhere, she defines the prosaic Heaven as

The House of Supposition –
The Glimmering Frontier that
Skirts the Acres of Perhaps –

(From # 696)

The poetic heaven is experience, not definition. So too is Hell and the experience is often a compound in one:

Parting is all we know of heaven
And all we need of hell.

(From # 1732)


Adapting Biblical Imagery

As a poet, Emily thought the Bible was hers. She took the advice of Robert Frost long before it was given. “Always fall in with what you are asked to accept; fall in with it—and turn it your way. Expression[s] like ‘divine right.’ Divine right? Yes, —if you let me make what I want of it.” Emily fell in with the Bible and turned it her way. She made what she wanted out of it. The Passion of Christ, for example:

Gethsemane –

Is but a providence – in the Being’s center –
Judea –
For Journey – or Crusade’s Achieving –
Too near –

Less obvious are the images of the Nativity in one of her most famous poems.

585

I like to see it lap the Miles –
And lick the Valleys up –
And stop to feed itself at Tanks –
And then – prodigious step

Around a Pile of Mountains
And supercilious peer
In shanties – by the sides of Roads
And then a Quarry pare

To fit its Ribs
And crawl between
Complaining all the while
In horrid – hooting stanza –
Then chase itself down Hill

And neigh like Boanerges –
Then – punctual as a Star
Stop – docile and omnipotent
At its own stable door.

The known solution to this poem is too simple: the poet is in awe of the Iron Horse and the way it overwhelms and conquers the landscape. In 1853, Emily wrote her brother Austin after hearing the sound of a train’s whistle when it first came to Amherst. “It gives us all new life, every time it plays. How you will love to hear it, when you come home again!”

“Is your house deeper off?” Emily asks in one of her letters. It is a good question. Should this poem be read “deeper off”?

Notice that Emily in her letter to her brother immediately associates the locomotive with new birth and life. The poem, written a decade later, deepens and develops the association. The first clue I would point to is her use of the word ‘prodigious.’ In context, it is usually taken to mean ‘great’ or ‘enormous.’ A prodigy, however, is also a child. The image of the “prodigious leap” is usually seen as a tunnel, but I would also suggest the poet has in mind the birth canal—a “pare” being the narrowing through which the infant must struggle to somehow “fit is Ribs / And crawl between / Complaining all the while / In horrid – hooting stanza .”

But this birth is divine. The neigh is like that of the Sons of Thunder (the translation of ‘Boanerges’), the divine witnesses of Jesus, James and John, who, like Zeus—the image in the Greek pantheon of Gods most associated with Jehovah—wanted to bring thunder and lightening down upon a city of unbelieving souls. In this reading, the prodigious step is from heaven to earth and is as “punctual as a Star.” The soul, having “chase[d] itself…stop[s] at its own stable door” where it becomes both “docile and omnipotent”—the inevitable Christian contradiction within the man who is both God and man. But the divine birth the poet gives witness to is the new birth of the soul.

These are esoteric views of the Christian story. The actual and historical are employed as metaphors for the poet’s own spiritual life. The stories evoke Presence beyond themselves. This allows Emily, without a blush, to make herself equal with God upon the cross.

875

I stepped from Plank to Plank
A slow and cautious way
The stars about my Head I felt
About my Feet the Sea.

I knew not but the next
Would be my final inch –
This gave me the precarious Gait
Some call Experience.

‘Walking-the-plank’ is a nautical execution, but the connection of “plank to plank” suggests the cross. Emily is at the intersection—stepping from one to another—stretched above the sea and beneath the cosmos. This precarious gait—length of steps (prodigious step) but also to the ear, g-a-t-e, a threshold—is the experience of heaven, more treasured by than heaven’s definition. Once again, Emily Dickinson takes Biblical imagery and makes what she wants out of it.

Invoking the Unseen Presence

In the Spring of 1876, Emily enclosed a note to Thomas Higginson, written on a separate page from her letter. The note simply says, “Nature is a haunted house – but Art – a House that tries to he haunted.” Emily wrote he poems in a way that implies—and hopefully calls forth—unseen Presence. This is what she means by haunting—the unseen ghost within.

670

One need not be a Chamber – to be Haunted –
One need not be a House –
The Brain has Corridors – surpassing
Material Place –

Far safer, of a Midnight Meeting –
External Ghost
Than its interior Confronting –
That Cooler Host

Far safer, through an Abbey gallop,
The Stone’s a’chase –
Than Unarmed, one’s a’self encounter –
In lonesome Place –

Oneself behind ourself, concealed –
Should startle most –
Assassin hid in our Apartment
Be Horror’s least

The Body – borrows a Revolver –
He bolts the Door –
O’erlooking a superior spectre –
Or more.

Emily is really interesting here—the unseen Presence—like the Kingdom of God—is within! Meeting a traditional ghost is far safer than coming upon this spectre—ourself concealed behind ourself—a superior spectre, or more….

To understand the dread, we return to Emily’s planks. A final verse—restored to “I felt A Funeral in my Brain” by Johnson—reads:

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down –
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And finished knowing – then

(From # 280)

The plunge into interiority reveals a world as vast as the exterior cosmos. The depth of the inner landscape provides all we need know of terror, awe and numinous fear. “Who has not found the Heaven – below /Will fail of it above. (From # 1544)

1543

Obtaining but our own Extent
In whatsoever Realm –
‘Twas Christ’s own personal Expanse
That bore him from the Tomb –

Poetry sprang from this sudden expanse. “The brain,” she wrote, “is wider than the Sky - / …deeper than the sea - / …the weight of God (632).” She told Higginson, “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” Those who failed to enter the expanse of this inner heaven were safe but still entombed.

216

Safe in their Alabaster Chambers –
Untouched by Morning –
Untouched by Noon –
Lie the meek members of the Resurrection –
Rafter of Satin – and Roof of Stone!

Grand go the Years – in the Crescent – above them –
Worlds scoop their Arcs –
And Firmaments – row –
Diadems – drop – and Doges – surrender –
Soundless as dots – on a Disc of Snow –

Once more, those who wait for the other heaven miss the harvest—and the resurrection—within. The interior planets plough through their heavens, “scoop[ing]” or dislodging crowns and powers that drop silently on the chill of a still world. Without a sense of depth and mystery, an awe of the unseen and a joy in the unknown, we remain safe in a dead body, entombed beneath a lively mystery.

A Cloistered Tribute to An Unknown God

Can we now make some sense of Emily Dickinson’s withdrawal from society? Nearly complete in her mid-thirties, her solitude has given rise to legend, myth and analysis. On those rare occasions when she received visitors, it is said she conversed in darkened rooms, or from behind a drawn curtain, or sitting in a chair up on the landing, turned away from her guest. She dressed in white and—for the most part—never left her father’s grounds after her withdrawal. Higginson thought of her as “my cracked poet.” Her life eluded him every bit as much as her poetry.

The riddle we can guess
We speedily despise –

(From # 1222)

Emily would have enjoyed students pouring over her letters and poems. She would be pleased with the variety and multitude of theories, although she would find a few perplexing. She once wrote to her sister-in-law, “In a life that stopped guessing, you and I should not feel at home.” The role of an eccentric enigma suits her.

Richard Sewall, one of her more perceptive biographers, has written, “Emily Dickinson’s life, in a sense almost unique among poets, was her work.” Her “manner of life, and her way of telling about her life, were symptomatic of her sense of the mystery of things.” People who have learned little and long ago of her will nonetheless recall her white aloneness, even if they remember little else. In her withdrawal, Emily became they way, the truth of the life she espoused—the Presence she cherished.

Conclusion

By definition of the community in which I live, I am an orthodox Christian. Emily Dickinson’s failure to apprehend an historical Jesus and subscribe to the literal truth of the gospels is a troublesome thing for me. I am confident that her esoteric approach to Christianity is insufficient. Many Christians will wonder what good then is gained by listening to her. What possible meaning can Christians take from her life?

Here is my answer to that question. The Gospel is not a florescent victory. In this life it is a light shining in the midst of darkness. We remain ignorant of many things, we need to be reminded of this and we be assured that the unknown is not at war with the known, up does not attack down, within does not accuse without. While God remains invisible to us, we feel better than we see. Admitting this mortal insufficiency is not cowardice. We walk on the cusp of mystery daily and delude ourselves if we think we do not. Emily Dickinson can help Christians appreciate the unknown and the unseen as powerful conduits of God’s more certain presence.

Night Templates

Night Templates________________________

1.

When walls were struck from the sea,
we, buried and hidden in virgin matter
untended, were trumped by enormous waters
thundering seminal waves into the solar vortex.

Now on a wet hillock where ritual is borne
the Priesthood of Patmos encase
the apparitions of God:
robing and girding sarcophagus forms

in a deluge of dust. Wanting the wind,
we structure instead
seven chambered
honeycombs.


2.

We call this place the Valley of God,
where the earth in cupping shape
holds vapors like incense in the temple.
Here is Adam’s grave, his cage of speech
beneath where the leaves rot.
No one recalls white doeskin testimony.
No one mentions the cupping shape of this womb.

3.

We conceive
the white pleated passage into night.
We take a timorous approach
and keep a folded fig leaf behind the altar of prayer.
Our desires climax and pulse wet above the quasars.
We bury our atonement in the sand.

The incessant swarm of death
ruptures our street visions
sacks the Alexandrian library
breaks the wooden cart in its flight
and peals the flesh off our unworthy bones.

Razing the Bar

Razing the Bar_________________
November 18, 2003

Our son was born today, many years ago.
We did not know what we were doing—
Starting a family, I supposed.
We were impaneling the jury:

Young men and women who believe
In the system—who are willing to serve.
I am afraid of the folded piece paper
They are passing on to God.

My son laughs when I tell him this.
He wants to know who the foreperson is.
Whoever is most anxious, I suppose,
Hoping God will vacate their decision.

Wendell Berry's Sabbath Day

Wendell Berry, in his collection of Sabbath poems, The Timbered Choir, speaks of failure and the deep weariness it produces as a kind of prelude to grace. Here is a portion of one story that he tells.

The bell calls in the town
Where forebears cleared the shaded land
And brought high daylight down
To shine on field and trodden road.
I hear, but understand
Contrarily, and walk into the woods.
I leave labor and load,
Take up a different story.
I keep an inventory
Of wonders and of uncommercial goods.

I climb up through the field
That my long labor has kept clear.
Projects, plans unfulfilled
Waylay and snatch at me like briars,
For there is no rest here
Where ceaseless effort seems to be required,
Yet fails, and spirit tires
With flesh, because failure
And weariness are sure
In all that mortal wishing has inspired.

I want to repeat that last bit: failure and weariness are sure in all that mortal wishing inspires. And so Mr. Berry’s Sabbath journey is to the wilderness rather than to church—and it is true that sometimes there is an abundance of mortal wishing in what is said at church. A little further on, the same thought returns.

I leave work’s daily rule
And come here to this restful place
Where music stirs the pool
And from high stations of the air
Fall notes of wordless grace,
Strewn remnants of the primal Sabbath’s hymn.
And I remember here
A tale of evil twined
With good, serpent and vine,
And innocence as evil’s stratagem.

I let that go a while,
For it is hopeless to correct
By generations’ toil,
And I let go my hopes and plans
That no toil can perfect.
There is no vision here but what is seen:
White bloom nothing explains
But a mute blessedness
Exceeding all distress,
The fresh light stained a hundred shades of green.

There is more to this beautiful poem than I extract and emphasize here, but I would like us to appreciate the connection that Mr. Berry makes between the Sabbath day and mortal failure. I am not as convinced as the poet seems to be that the flight into wilderness is so dissimilar to his neighbors' gathering to the village church—not so different as to be thought of as contrary. What the soul seeks in either direction is a sense of the holy. Both seek a Sabbath rest from the inevitable failure of human toil—toil that intellectually manifests itself in explanations. There is a part of us that will relish explanations—and so the homily and the sermon—but that is not what the soul is hungry for.

In another of his Sabbath poems, we find this:

…………… And so the mind
That comes to rest among the bluebells
Comes to rest in motion, refined
By alteration. The bud swells

Opens, makes seed, falls, is well.
Being, becoming what it is:
Miracle and parable
Exceeding thought, because it is
Immeasurable; the understander
Encloses understanding, thus
Darkens the light. We can stand under
No ray that is not dimmed by us.

The mind that comes to rest is tended
In ways that it cannot intend:
Is borne, preserved, and comprehended
By what it cannot comprehend.

(Italics, mine.)

This is why meditative silence—a rest from all our explanations—is as essential to the Christian meeting that Mr. Berry avoids as it is to his own experience of wilderness. Such silence makes room for the holiness of Divine presence—as an indication of our deep faith rather than as evidence of its articles and creeds. What explains does not sustain. Next week, I would like for us to consider what this silence might be like, should we find it in our meetings.

For now, this last poem concludes with a verse that reflects upon the indivisibility of true Sabbath and this silent rest.

Your Sabbath, Lord, thus keeps us by
Your will, not ours. And it is fit
Our only choice should be to die
Into that rest, or out of it.

Inclination

Irony appears as a type of judgment in the Old Testament and casts its shadow on many that inhabit the ancient page. Irony is apparent only when our perspective forcibly changes and the chaos of things line up in a fateful way.

In my own life, irony casts a shadow after sudden, thunderous blows create a breach in the backdrop of what has been daily granted. The following poem is an account of one such alignment.

Inclination____________

When I read
how long the poet
took to finish her poetic deed
I want to hide beneath the rocks…
My inclination is to be done.

In culinary art
it is the same—
my wife forgetting how
others at a table will linger…
Her inclination is to be done.

Although our son died
days before being married
being buried close to a man
whose name is also Done.

Sling Shot

This poem is based on two incidents that occurred in childhood. The first is a thing that happened to me when I was twelve. The second incident is something I did soon after because I did not want to be a boy who was tortured by other boys. I despise the shame both acts of violence continue to plant in the deep inside of me .

.....

..

Sling Shot


1.

It was a small cruelty measured against
the ovens and camps
of contextual time—but

I saw cold Nazi ice in their eyes
the instant before
the hot spear of a cigarette
burned into my arm—first

one branding
followed by another


2.

and then another.

I cannot escape the thicket
we wove ourselves into

throwing stones at Stephen
as he was walking home.

I took off my coat. I gave it to Paul.

I aimed at a puddle—
wanting to startle and to be cheered.

I threw a rock that ricocheted
into His temple.

Jeremiah Walks the Streets of Clearfield

I often think of a game we played as children. Children learned this game at school and played it at recess. It was called, SIMON SAYS. A leader would issue his commands under the authority of someone named Simon:

Simon says, raise your hands!
Simon says, sit down!
Simon says, look to your right!

And we would all raise our hands, sit down and look to the right. The catch would come sooner or later. The leader would tell us all to stand up and whoever stood up was declared out. He was out because this time the leader did not invoke the authority of Simon.

I suspect there are religious origins to the game. Perhaps it began as a rather fun way to catechize Catholic children as to the importance of the Pontiff (Simon being Peter's original name), or—more likely—as some sort of Protestant parody. Whatever the case, it is now a game the Latter-day Saints take too seriously. We have, of course, baptized the dead practice and given it a new name. We call it, FOLLOWING THE PROPHET.

How well our own children have learned to play the game is illustrated in an old talk President Spencer W. Kimball gave. He spoke of attending a meeting and sitting on the stand. He noticed a group of boys sitting the front row behaving strangely. In unison, the boys would cross their legs, pull the same earlobe, rub their foreheads, and then cross their arms. On a sudden, President Kimball had an epiphany of sorts—“they were imitating me!” He went on to caution leaders to be careful of their behavior. I want to caution those boys now that they are no longer boys.

This is not the sort of obedience the Lord requires of us. We do not look to mortal men and copy what they do. We do not wear dark blue suits because certain other men wear dark blue suits. We do not speak in church with the legal cadence of a vocal strut because a favorite apostle did. We do not replicate handcart treks only to return home and turn our back on the poor and needy of this world.

Unfortunately, the last two or three generations of Latter-day Saints are finding it difficult to put away childish things and to mature in their faith. There is no dictum in scripture akin to the refrain of that well beloved Primary song, “Follow The Prophet.” The verse closest to it—“whether by my own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same”—must be understood in conjunction with Joseph Smith’s caveat: a prophet is a prophet only when he is acting as a prophet. A mortal man’s voice is the voice of God only when God is putting words into his mouth—which is the best definition of revelation I know of.

In the temple we covenant to obey God and while this would include that of God resident in men, the distinction is nevertheless an important one. In the Bible and again in the Book of Mormon, we are repeatedly told not to put our trust in the arm of flesh and insofar as we put our trust in a man or in quorums of men that is what we do. That being said, it is not necessary to ignore the teaching of a favorite Primary song. We can keep the refrain of this song in its place of preference as a well-established motto if we deepen our understanding of its counsel as we mature. But this is exactly what we have failed to do.

Why is it important for us to mature in our understanding of what it means to follow the prophet? The answer to this question is found in understanding an event that both the Bible and the Book of Mormon refer to as the provocation (Psalms 95:8; Hebrews 3:8; Jacob 1:7 and Alma 12:36). This event occurred at the foot of Mt. Siani. The people of Israel were invited into God’s presence. Instead, “they removed and stood far off,” telling Moses to go and speak with God and they would listen to his account of what God had to say when he returned from the mountain. Moses went into “the thick darkness where God was” alone (Exodus 20: 19-21). Israel’s refusal to follow Moses into the thick darkness that hid the divine presence angered the Lord. We are told that, “the Lord in his wrath…swore that they should not enter into his rest (Doctrine & Covenants 84:24).” As a result, that generation did not enter into the Promise Land. Moses later lamented, with reference to these things, “Would to God that all the Lord’s people were prophets (Numbers 11:29).” That is to say, a mature understanding of the dictum required Israel to follow the prophet up the mountain, to speak with God themselves, and thus become prophets themselves rather than relying solely on a human ambassador.

If we are the descendents of ancient Israel, we need to beware the sins of the fathers—especially this sin. More and more we seem to be saying to the President of the Church and to other brethren, ‘you enter into God’s presence and speak to God for us. We will stay far back and listen to you.’ The problem with this attitude—and it was the same with the fathers—is that we don’t really listen to them either. We heed instead the common platitudes that all of us employ to fill in the gaps between inspiration. Sooner or later, Jeremiah walks the streets of our hometown and delivers the Lord's dreadful message:

“I have had it with ‘prophets’ who get all their sermons secondhand from each other. They make up stuff and pretend it’s a real sermon. They preach their ‘everything-will-turn-out-fine’ sermons to congregations with no taste for God.” And then he asks the real difficult question which brings us to the topic I need to address. “Have any of these ‘prophets’ bothered to meet with me, the true God? Bothered to take in what I have to say? Listened to and then lived out my word? (Jeremiah 23: 30-31, 16-18, Eugene Peterson translation, The Message)”

Let me repeat Jeremiah’s question, “Have any of these ‘prophets’ bothered to meet with me?” The true topic that I need to address, the topic that all these words are but a preface to, is that of meeting. Jesus said that whenever two or three come together in His name, “there I will be also.” We come together on the Sabbath—at least in theory—to meet with the Savior. But that is not the reality I experience. In my experience, we come together to meet each other, to glad-handle and slap one another on the back, to exchange our myths about ourselves, to honor and praise one another. This is the audio-visual of our meetings.

And what a noise we make of it! We fail to acknowledge the ancient truth that Habakkuk taught, that when we coming into the divine presence, “all the earth should keep silence before him (Habakkuk 2:2).” We fail to heed the advice of Eli to Samuel and silently pray before meeting, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” We’re not listening—not to the Lord anyway. We are correlating, setting appointments, talking about home improvements, stress at work, and the ignorant Christians meeting down the road. We are greeting visiting authorities, commenting on how we all look in our new garb, anything but communing with the Lord. In all of this we are removing ourselves from God and standing far off, telling others—none too seriously—to speak to God and we will listen to them.

This week I’d like to continue my thoughts as to why we are such an irreverent people—to continue to explore the question of why it is our meetings so often go bad with spoiled Spirit. I’d like to consider why it is that we still refuse the Lord’s invitation to meet with Him, only to draw to the far back of meetings and commune with each other instead. This exploration will, I trust, challenge some of our basic assumptions of what is—or ought to be—at the heart of Christian discipleship: Why it is that we continue to play a child’s game. Why, for us, following the prophet does not translate into going up into the thick darkness where God is, but means instead, “you go and we will listen to you.” Why it is that after He has gone, we turn to others and listen to them instead.

Midnight Mass

As an introduction to the broader Christian world in which I also live, move and have my being, and to all problems ecclessia as well, I add an entry from my journal.

......................................................................................

December 25, 2005-Christmas

Christmas Eve—quite late when I climb into Tim and Brittany’s car and the three of us drive to Salt Lake City to attend Midnight Mass in the Cathedral of the Madeleine. A dark and comfortably cold evening with a trace of snow still on the ground, we park a few blocks up the hill from the Madeleine and enjoyed our walk down to South Temple. We stand in line about half way up the western steps. I have not attended Midnight Mass since the Christmas we lost Benjamin and I went with Barb and Ben’s brother Mike to Saint Joseph’s in Ogden.

This evening, those who wait for the doors to open are bathed in a moist, wax-yellow light from above the cathedral doors and the lamp poles as well. The confused, indistinct shadows cast by the barren branches of trees are magnified on the walls of the surrounding buildings as on the Cathedral. This gathering is mostly young people with an indistinct spirituality, uncertain as to how it should express itself, shifting slowly in the cold. One young man swears in what seems to be a customary effort to impress the chicks, but shrinks back into himself when a young lady glances his way, raises an eyebrow and says nothing. Her rebuke, however, is without lasting power and—as a forgiven man—he is soon smiling again.

There is some whisper about a need for tickets, but it is the devil stirring among us and when the doors are opened a half-hour before midnight, we are made welcome without requirement. The lighting inside the cathedral is subdued. Proceeding down the aisle, it seems that we are to be a people who walk in darkness.[1] It is not unpleasant: from behind the chancel screen (the veil of the temple, in Catholic iconography) a chamber orchestra and choir fill the heavenly vault with the holy music of Christmas. The sounds are delicate as snowflakes and then instantly change into almighty power thanks to the organ trumpets behind and above us--a power that causes the rafters—indeed, the entire superstructure—to tremble, tremble, tremble.

The aisle pews against the wall are tiny—sitting two, perhaps three if you are young and skinny. About two-thirds of the way to the altar, Tim and Brittany take one and I take the pew behind them—sitting next to a young man who has taken the trouble to come by himself—which I believe to be a sign of his sincere heart. I am thankful to share our worship and begin Christmas alongside of him. Turning, I look about.

Catholics who are members of this parish entered some time before us—I assume by another door—and have taken the center pews. Youth is no longer the dominant trait. Indeed, there no longer is a predominate trait. This is something I find truly marvelous about Catholic worship—people from all walks of life, social status and color, wearing all manner of dress coming together to worship—tonight, to welcome the tiny newborn Son of God into our midst. Who are we—I wonder—who make requirements and set standards for those who want to gather together to worship with us? And what would shock many Latter-day Saints more than to witness this stillness—this quiet reverence, though children abound here too. Obviously, casual clothes do not necessarily hinder communal worship, while the kind of obsessive attention to ornamental dress manifested by some us will. We often lose the point—those gathered here have not.

The sacred dwelling itself raises all kinds of issues within and without me. I know one sister who will dismiss this place and the experience I'm having here with contempt—if for no other reason than the gargoyles atop the buttresses of the cathedral, which she believes represent the demons within. Others think the holiness I am feeling here is nothing more than a slight of hand, architectural and imaginative counterfeits of the true Spirit. But, contrary to Hugh Nibley’s assertions, holiness cannot be achieved in that way. Holiness is the providence of the Spirit and cannot be effectively counterfeited. I have concluded that holiness of Spirit exists independent of all rivalry. It can—and does—bless the worshipping heart in schism—and without sanctioning anyone’s debating points. As I look about, seeing what is reflected in the countenance of my fellow Christians, I whisper quietly to myself that the Spirit is in this place.

There is still another sense to the Spirit indwelling here—something I've never experienced in our Mormon chapels, but at times I have found in the temple. There is an air of expectation—a look of anticipation fixed on these countenances. We are caught up in the story—participating characters in the play that will be enacted here. This is not a new experience of the faithful for me—a new way in which we become believers—but it is a rare one and I am delighted that it is a part of this Christmas! For the moment, we are the shepherds here, the magi and the inhabitants of Bethlehem. Or perhaps we are the ones who dwell in darkness, on the other side of the Gentile coast, and our light is about to come. And that is what comes—a tremendous, radiant light, beneath the trumpets of the organ.

In this new light, the Bishop has gathered with his entourage—and with them the image of the infant Christ. The congregation arises and sings “Oh, Come All Ye Faithful” as the Bishop begins the procession down the center aisle. As they progress, the light sweeps forward before them, like a mighty wave rushing ashore, and by the time the infant child is put into the Christmas crib, the cathedral is engulfed in light. The feeling of joy is palpable throughout the sanctuary—joy is passing through every heart and all faces are aglow. My young friend next to me is moved to tears.

We all take part in the prayers, the hymns and responsorial with enthusiasm—I along with the rest, although I omit saying portions of the creed. Frankincense fills the sanctuary. Throughout the Divine Drama, the Word is incensed, the Host—His Holy Presence—is incensed, and we are incensed as well. Sitting, standing—all is done in praise before the infant king who’s light we welcome into the cave of this dark hour. Bishop Niederauer’s homily—much of it having to do with poor—is profound and deeply moving. When members of the congregation turn and greet one another—a part of the Mass since Vatican II, I believe—I embrace my young friend, something I found quite awkward to do the last time I attended Mass, but now I do so fully and sincerely. He is my brother Christian tonight without divide and a false sense of distant elevation.

We stay to the exact end and then walk outside into a strong, cold wind and cloudy night sky—but a new star is visible nevertheless. We speak merrily about our experience, as do others. All about us are midnight pedestrians, walking up the steep hill from the Cathedral—each a transubstantiated Magi or shepherd returning home for a few brief hours of sleep, each with a heart pulsing peace throughout the Body.

Later, having climbed into bed and pulled the covers over me, before I drift off to sleep, I remember a moment early on, when Timothy—studying the mural behind the altar—turned to me and whispered, “Is that the Father supporting His Son upon the cross?” Suddenly, the enormity of the Incarnation overcomes me and tears flood my pillows. I can only thank God for what has shone and what has been shown.
______________
[1] Matthew 4:16

The Last Supper

When a brother or sister stands in meeting to say they know spiritual truth beyond a shadow of doubt, it is not only doubts they avoid with their fiction but shadows as well. If you live within the shadow of Mormon and want to be thought of as a spiritual soul there is no easier path than to feign certainty. The Prophet was himself agitated by this quirk in his followers. We sense his frustration when he puts a red-hot query to the Elders in Kirtland: “Why are you so certain about all things when all things are so uncertain with you?”

Here is a problem for florescent-light-saints to think about: there is no shadow or cloud or shade of meaning in the temple of your worship. But God is often depicted in the Bible as a cloud that overshadows us—a being that provides us with necessary shade. Clouds and shadows and bowery by their very nature provide ambiguities to our experience as well as a sense of mystery. And mystery is the last thing a Know-It-All want to sense.

We should not be impressed with what the Pratt brothers referred to as artificial light. I am more than content to dwell in this cloud of unknowing—to know things within and not beyond the shadow of doubt—perhaps just to sense them—and to appreciate the shade of our Sabbath bowery—the tabernacle given to us in our journey across time.

.......

The Last Supper_____________

Some are for shadows
well-intended shady areas—
meaning men must

whisper
walking where
the light of God is indirect:

the way the Word
became flesh

the way the Word planted
becomes a tree

in the soul of man

the way tortured limbs
become evergreen

how it is
when Jesus gestures
saying

this is my flesh
and this

the blood of it all.

The Testimony of Wrath

As the wind words began to propose judgements soon to come upon the earth, Enoch also heard another voice coming from the bowels beneath him--a pained and weary lamentation. Just so, Joseph intuited that this voice would become a dissonant chorus as soon as his own words faded away. Then were we to hear the voices of thunder, lightening, tempest, quake and strange tide. These we are told constitute The Testimony of Wrath.

The Testimony of Wrath
________A Vision of Enoch, Seventh from Adam_______

“Deep is calling to deep
by the roar of your cataracts,
all your waves and breakers
wash over me.”
Psalm 42:7

There are intrigues that surge from the wounds of the sea,
hauntings that vie for the soul.
There are movements that wash
from the center of Sidhe*—dark that is part of the whole.

There are voices entombed in inanimate things:
Virbrato, Tremor and Fire
There are spirits aloft
on God’s breath as it flings

chants from the Core of the Pyre.

* An old Irish word pronounced Shee or the world of nature spirits.

Creel

Creel____________________________


If Spirit is still and small—if a wisp of wind will do—then live a simple and unadorned life and do not be taken in by the thunder of your own mountain.

It is better to live level with the sea and weave life like a creel—a basket that is not as deep as you.

It is your soul that is threatened by the coming of every winter’s night and grace is a peasant thing. It is the small bit of halibut you savor by the fire.

10/16/06

Note: I am unable to post the lines of this poem as they should actually appear. If someone would like a copy of the poem as it should scan, one is available.

A Slight and Singular Grace

A Slight and Singular Grace


for Sarah Wheeler



“If you desire a further witness, cast your mind upon the night
that your cried unto me in your heart…." Doctrine & Covenants 6:22

Of three, this one was difficult,
keeping all of the doors closed
never returning her “I-Love-You”s—
his capacity remaining a mystery.

Carefully she lays herself down
beside him, praying where he
has at last fallen asleep.
This closes the distance a bit…

Still, she yearns for returning words
the way poets do when they cannot find
them and they begin to groan their
way around the barricades. Something

stirs in him. He turns to her, opens
his sleepy mystery-eyes, and says
the love words. As if God in His own
distance has said, “This will have to do.”

4/22/06

Rachel Weeping

Not that I endure so very well. Angry poems are difficult to read and absorb, and I’ve written a few. The images for this poem come from the Biblical story of the Passover, our family time together with Ben before the lid on the coffin was closed and then the actual burial—the descent into the ground, which to my everlasting regret I can only imagine. In this poem, I equate the lid of the coffin with the doorpost in Exodus, upon which the children of Israel were to put the blood of the lamb and thus save their children alive. I am also interested in the ambiguity that exists between
Isaiah's concept and the Book of Mormon view of God’s outstretched hand. Bejamin's mother's hand reaches out in love, but what of God's? Does His hand reach out to strike us again and again or to save?

The poem recalls a bitter moment but not a lasting one. It’s necessary to acknowledge anger and resentment and offer the tumult to God. He can take it. He knows our true feelings anyway and only an honest soul may hope to experience the healing intimacies of the Spirit. No matter the trial, God will not accept hypocrisies. We cannot come to Him pretending that we feel anything other than what we truly feel.


Rachel Weeping___________________


Beneath a bloodless lintel
between the pristine post
his mother’s hand is outstretched
still and laid upon his ghost.

But at the closing of the door
love’s angel must passo’er.
And when the door is put to sod
ask of Almighty God:

Whose heart is harder still?

Our Souls to Take

Members of my faith community tend to see themselves as actors rather than props. That we are to act and not merely be acted upon is axiomatic in the Book of Mormon. As a result, we dismiss the notion of fate. Such positivity does not hinder God. Like everyone else, we are frequently taken to places where we would not go. The fact is that we are acted upon in ways that easily dismiss our ability to control our fate. This is when our inclination to act is to be most valued. In such moments our Christianity is weighed. But first we must brought to the mature realization that we are all vulnerable to sudden, catastophic revelations of what we must endure.

Our Soul to Take__________________

“Does not the potter have a right over the clay?” Romans 9:21

We resist Romans—
those winds and spirits
that take us where we would not go.
We are able to dress and gird ourselves.

Still
when we wake
into a trinity of storm

a layered Pentecost of water
come down from heaven
upon this jagged imposition

we know this is not where
we laid ourselves down to sleep.

Our souls have been taken to sea.

One Year Ago I Danced

I thought I would share with you my own John Muir moment that I recorded in my jounal nearly one year ago:

October 27, 2005

One of those great displays of weather, of such a spirit that our spirits are made to exclaim (in paraphrase of the Gold Bible) 'the God of Nature dances!' I saw the sky turn gray and then darken through my window in Salt Lake City and thus enticed, I was soon out the door and driving north on the Interstate.

Forty minutes later, when I pulled my car into the Nature Conservancy, the sky above was ominous—deeply laden with battleship clouds. I was not a quarter-mile out on the planks when the wind willed itself into a maelstrom, creating erratic currents in the air about me. Soon the clouds were all a-tumble and every drop of rain that fell to earth passed through a multitude of misdirection. It was “surf’s up!” to the hawks and the crows that rode upon the chaotic tides in obvious delight.

But as to human company, I was alone among the dry reeds and with fog closing in about me, I was unable to see more than a quarter-mile off. My soul therefore gave way to exuberance and to folly. I raised my arms as if they too were wings. I dipped and banked and made my own swooshing sounds. I called into the vortex of the storm, “O Lord, you are a majestic God!” I sang with full throat and pretended to conduct the squalls with my walking stick. In my mind, I was upon an English moor and the hound was in the sky. Then the wind cleared a small path across the marshes, and out there in the distance—surrounded by mist—was the pavilion. I was now in Japan and beyond the structure, the haiku of a poet’s pond! But there was no time for the digressions of Zen. Once again the mists renewed their shroud and I was carried away in the Spirit and put back upon the moor.

I was a frenzy myself—somehow the wind had found its way within me, poured its wildness into my veins and my blood was alive with it. I spun with the maelstrom like a dervish, and sang and danced and sent my praises aloft. It was a fullness-of-times out there, a coming together of all my life’s blessings—the dearest moments relived. I realized that throughout my life God has been breathing into my sails, choosing my adventures, plotting a homeward course.

I drove home intoxicated. M—did not know what to make of me when I finally came through the door.

A Poem In Two Senses

I remember when I first heard about Evelyn Wood’s Speed-Reading course. It was as if someone had proposed rape—every book to be poked into and tossed aside: slam, bam, thank-you ma’am. No one in my home would ever have countenanced such pillaging. Poetry teaches courtship—a love affair with words—and it is the words that woo. I never look into a book that does not smile sweetly in return and suggest that we spend a lovely day together. The pages all turn slowly and I enjoy the texture of their flesh and the perfume of the printer's ink. I turn the open book over and put it a little above my waist as I lay my back to the meadow, clasping hands behind my head and closing my eyes. In silence I ponder the wonderful thing the book has just said to me before turning to her again.

______________A Poem in Two Senses______________

A poem is partly a puzzle
a problem to be solved
or put into the cold case files:

turn the page prematurely
and the ancient curses are in place.

This is a poem in one sense.

A poem in the other sense
is a Delphic Oracle rising
from subterranean pools:

pass without payment
the cave of wells
and the pilgrim is in peril

the journey is in jeopardy.

readings are archeological
you need to pitch a tent.

7/2/05

______________

And this too is how we come to scripture, to the writings of prophets, to the doorway of the Muse. Scripture is the divine poetic. A dark, black hole may await any speed-reader who would so pillage heaven and rape the Word of God. Perhaps they know not what it is they do. Abba forgive them then and those who teach them too.

My Father - Part Two

I was born into a poetic home. My father was of a pure Scot ancestory and that is one explanation: the wind carried the brine, the brine went into his blood, and out came a torrent of words. My mother was enchanted by these words, she fell in love with the windy traces of the brouge. Douglas, Sr. would at home lean against the mantle, puff his pipe, and recite Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem, "Crossing the Bar." On other occasions it was "Sea Fever" by John Masefield or a Robert Service poem, and always by heart. At the end of these performances, my mother would break out in applause--each and every time.

When I was born, I was given my father's name. Such a christening is a stigmata of sorts, both a wounding and a blessing--a definite nail in a sure place. After my father died, this name became a sacred thing to me. I would often go alone to the coast and stand by myself, looking out upon a brutal storm and speak our name out loud, as if it were some key word the ocean would accept.

"Douglas......."

I would say it between the pounding waves, the way one takes a breath between phrases of a hymn. I suppose I expected to see an angel fly out of the midst of heaven.

"Douglas......."

I braced myself against the wind--against the breath of God. I wanted the ocean to speak to me as my father once did and tell me the stories one more time.

"Douglas......."

The wind forces me to remember. I stagger back and collapse on the beach, waiting for rhapsodies to rise, for the burning coal to be pressed against my lips, and a melody of words to come forth.

My Father - Part One

My father took me as well to the end of the land—to the vast gray havens of the sea. Always and ever I find his spirit there though he has long since left my simple sight. I need only to walk beneath the cliffs of Half Moon Bay or climb upon the outcroppings of rock into the surf at Monterey to feel the weight of his presence. In those distant days we would sit together on some large piece of driftwood and gaze out upon a foggy sea. He told me his stories of thunderous storms and tragic shipwrecks that once happened all along the California coast. These accounts were vivid incantations and the mind of a small boy easily saw them with spiritual eyes. Such stories—as are told by fathers to their sons—orient us to the universe and put a provident sensitivity into what is happening around and about. My father lived in the depths of things and because he took me with him, I grew up in his world. I began to sense that my tears were somehow related to this ocean brine.

I sometimes get a glimpse his ghost standing beneath a dark and turbulent sky, staring out to sea. His hands are deep into the pockets of his old khaki jacket as he braces himself against the windy Pentecost that blows in with the squalls. He is clean-shaven still, but I remember the intimacies that were permitted me as a child when I knew of a roughness beneath this skin—a roughness that he daily kept at bay. When I was a child, that roughness somehow put a difference between us and connected him to the churning sea. But I am brother to that now. I know the ghost that is looking out to sea is looking not only upon the stories he told, but also on those he keeps to himself. As a young man in the Marine Corps, he spent months upon the deep, living with men who were doomed to die.

Older now than he became, I am sure he owned his own death as I ran off chasing sandpipers. He was looking, as I do now, for the curraugh that carries the soul away.

Immram______________________________

Below the egret of judgment
from this granite outcrop
cormorants launch their dance
into empty space.

Aided by currents
they circle, collapse and climb
above the kelptic web
above the captured wood that drifts.

Like me, they are enamored.
Like me, they are aroused.
But I can only look into the mist
listen for a seafaring psalm

and wait for the coracle to come.

8/8/2002


When I returned to him—the sandpipers having fled and my feet wet and caked with sand —I looked up into the lines of his face. He was so silent and so salty that I thought he stood with God. I trust his silent spirit to the same thought today.

Cross Current

I lived in northern California until 1996. For nearly thirty years I loved nothing more than to take my children one on one to the ocean and hike along the cliffs of that rugged coastline. I have many good memories of long walks and talks with each of them. I am fond of a particular memory of Ben--our son who died in 1999. One of our favorite haunts was Point Lobos, north of Big Sur and just before Carmel. We were together there many times, but in retrospect one occurence offers itself as a shadow of things to come.

Grief is not a single emotion so much as it is life awry with many conflicting and supplementary currents of emotion. It connects itself to the sea in this way. And in losing Ben, our grief became our cross--itself a conflicted symbol.

Cross Current____________________________________

"For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. But if I live in the flesh,
this is the fruit of my labor: yet what I shall choose I know not.
For I am in a strait betwixt two,
having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better:
Nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you (Philippians 1:21 – 24)."


I might surrender to the tide in my blood.

I could close my eyes and find myself again
standing north of Whaler’s Cove—
watching my beautiful boy unearth the abalone shell.
I would put my arm across his shoulders
and we would walk together
toward the sounds of a watery apocalypse.

Even now I hear the siren music only we would hear.

He would run atop the cavern’d rock
as if to dance upon the spine of a crustacean—
embracing every plume of each exploding wave.
He made sea lions happy and seals paid him homage.
He put their kelptic offerings into his bag
and set them out for study later.

It pulls me out—this tide in our blood.

Almost—the warn sun ignites the fragrant mariposa.
Almost—the brine is in the air.
We could rise with the help of my shepherd’s staff—
But I should be down beside him
waiting for the careful movement of hands
that will extricate every shell that has been buried.


3/14/2002

Irreantum

Our souls look upon the sea--each with a different sense of things. That sense depends on the stories we've been told--the hopes and the fears such tales leave inside of us. When one of our sons died beneath the ice of a river a few days before Christmas, his younger brother was beseiged with night terrors. I wrote the following poem for him.



Irreantum________________________________


The Hebrew thinks the sea a witch’s brew—
a liquid brine flooding the nasal passages
forcefully entering chambers it should not own.
He sees chaos in the crone’s stir of the spoon—
the maelstrom of that awful monster—death and hell.

But sit beside the Irish monk who sits on granite shores.

The waters that come to him—as if the voice of God—
embrace his broken body and release
the deeper, inward transits of his soul.
Put upon the silver skiff, he sails to Western Isles
listening to the hymnal waves—breathing in the windy tide.

If we choose to be a desert people
the deluge will disturb our dreams.

Oregon Poem

Let's begin with a poem I began writing while in Oregon. I had been walking with my wife along the beach south of the Devil's Punchbowl. We were paying close attention to the characters and to their activities. I was hunting for a poem. After returning to the top of the cliff, we came upon a young man sitting at a picnic table reading his Bible. My first thought? I wished the hand of the Lord had rested so easily on me. In other words, I coveted his life: a Jesus Freak surfer along the Oregon coast. (This is all in the imagination of course--what do I know of his life and trials?) But almost immediately another thought hit me:

What is it that we get from studying the scriptures? I think most people would answer saying something like our LDS definition of truth: a knowledge of things--credo--articles of belief. But I don't think this is what my Jesus Freak took from his Bible. The thing that is before doctrine and beyond creed is the subject of this poem.


The Oregon Poem____________________________


The deep down rumble down
is now a Bible on splintered wood.

In wet olive skin
—as if some seal had come
upon the rock—
his eyes fix on
the swell of words.

Once more into the deep rumble down,
he leans his board into his sense of things.

All souls ride upon a sense of things.

--DJD 7/2006

It is our "sense-of-things" that deepens in prayerful readings of scripture--a sense that cannot mature in creeds and doctrines. A prayerful, silent reading of scripture provides a hollow space (that is, a domestic church) where we experience the wind-words blowing through and feel their intonation.