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.

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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.