Josh Garrels: Rejoice and Lament

Learn this lesson well, my friend
There’s a time to rejoice and lament
Every season will find an end
All will fade and be made new again
Standing on the rocks of the railroad tracks
Feet calloused, eyes open, sun beats on my back
As I gaze upon the unseen winds
And they are wandering, whispering
Wisdom that’s eternal
From the heart to the mind
To the hand to the journal
Now the kernel of the seeds in the cleft of the rock
And it’s watered by the winds
Having power to unlock and
Stop the clock of chronological logic
With its homogenized systems
That are dead and can’t dodge it
Being deaf to the voice of the Almighty One
Spirit illumines the dark like a fire
Revealing the way that was hidden but is higher
Now we must travel on the wings
That will never grow tired
Of searching the mysteries of God
I said Father the feathers of my wax wings
Fall away by the rising of the sun
And I have descended when I was undone
And I will ascend when your Spirit comes
Because what’s been done and overcome
Cannot be stopped by the power of any human
Like the number of sand we will stand
And we will fall, all
In the face of an eternal call
But those who call on His name
In the midst of the pain
In the guilt and the shame
And the world full of blame
And all the bloody stains
From the unjust gains
I learned all men suffer the same
Because we’re wayward sons
And all our jokes betray
Our foolish hearts and our selfish ways
But if we would turn to the Father’s grace
We would never be the same
This is an unseen land of a devastated soul
That’s prepared in contemplative silence
For the mighty working hand of an unseen Lord
To come restore this land from its violence
I said walk another mile
Stare across the fields of grain
This is how the prophets train
Learn this lesson well my friend
There’s a time to rejoice and lament
Every season will find an end
All will fade and be made new again

trees and snow

"It is surprising and memorable as well as a valuable experience, to be lost in the woods at any time." -Thoreau

A storm is coming this evening. Fleshing out an essay that sends me into shivers. I hope I will believe this time in my life is valuable some day. There are so many things on my heart that practicalities prevent, and yet this story keeps staring me in the face. Oh Lord, keep me gentle in disappointment and from the cold ice of bitterness. My heart rests in you. My face is numb from the cold on my cheeks. Blessing the Lord I admit does not come as easily as I wish it would. If I could just make out His face. Kathleen Norris on the plains of Dakota, she may not have been a Mormon, but she has captured a Spiritual heritage that is deeply connected with its soil, she holds their stories...

"…and while our sense of being forgotten by the rest of the world makes it all the more important that we preserve them and pass them on, instead we often neglect them. I walk downtown, wearing a good many of the clothes I own, keeping my head down and breathing through several thicknesses of wool scarf. A day so cold it hurts to breath; dry enough to freeze spit. Kids crack it on the sidewalk. Walking with care, snow barely covering the patches of ice, I begin to recall a canticle or psalm, and my body keeps time:

Cold and chill, bless the Lord
Dew and rain, bless the Lord
Frost and chill, bless the Lord
Ice and snow, bless the Lord
Nights and days, bless the Lord
Light and darkness, bless the Lord."

Mormonism is deeply American in its roots, even if it spans the globe. Swimming at Walden, reading Thoreau, taking a reprieve from my theological grasping, all took me back to the "Sacred Grove," that focal point of the Mormon story. I would not have gone there on my own, and I am only thankful that it came with such beautiful aesthetics. That seems like grace. A library is certainly no place to deal with pain. Writing, well I cannot tell if it will fit into the confines of another institution. If another institution will fit into the confines of my bank account. I imagine these things will work themselves out. I imagine in the morning there will be a beautiful blanket of wet snow. When all of this uncertainty unfreezes, I should like to stop sojourning, and enter the world, and move beyond sentiment when it comes to grieving for those in need. However my calling is supposed to work out, as I push through this story, I hope some day to be out of these woods, to follow Christ and not a culture or a myth. To embrace community whether in rain or shine or snow.

west to east

T.S. Eliot:

"We are all eager for a categorical solution, afraid of the clumsy, undefined, paradoxical flow of life and its events which may in fact, be the truth of it."

Erin, my "visiting teaching companion," from Utah. I haven't seen her since I was living at the base of the Wasatch Mountains as a freshman in college. Her mother made a mean breakfast burrito and I remember imagining as we downed those Chile cheese besitos how we would start our own Taqueria with regularly visiting Mariaches, so much heaven were in them. Her residence in Las Cruces now is just another irony of transience I am learning to live with. I read a wonderful letter from her this week.
I know I hurt Erin back then, along with a large train of elephants, whose procession I pushed out as I flew away from those mountains, away from so many things. Dearest Erin, thank you for your friendship and your kind words. I am not as strong as you say, and confidence is an elusive quality to admire. God met me in that desert in confounding ways, and I was never sure for one moment what I was doing there, much less what I wanted, even if it appeared that way.
I have had so many friends I have taken for granted along my wandering path. The best of them are scattered from sea to shining sea. I'm not complaining, well maybe a little, but I am missing them. Trying to let people be who they have been in my life, and who they are.
Whatever those sayings are about taking someone's baby out of the bathwater, or some kind of blooming that's supposed to plant feet where they hatch, walking on soil rather than eggshells when it comes to keeping your eye on the ball. I unwittingly took the Mormon trail backward going from the land of Zion all the way to New England. When I think of providence I am not sure if God is trying to be funny or metaphorical in this, or both. I don't have to know. He hasn't left me. Friendship is quenching, not least from a dear Mormon friend.

Charles, the River

Long observer of proud civilization,
hospitable supporter of feathered floaters,
glistening road of sinuous rowers,
generous sustainer of marsh loving sparrows,
oh quiet reflector of cold winds’ furrows-
do you know how this season will end?

October: 2009

The brightness of the leaves bursting color are humbling, after all of the complaining I have been doing, this year. October has taken on a redness I don't think I have seen yet, thus far. Something having to do with the elements over last winter in all its brutality has bestowed it, I hear.

I have been starting to glean some things recently. Most pertinently, that I have survived something, plain and simple. The details are less important than what they amount to which is the reality of injustice, and still I am not a saint for survival, even if I tend to turn survivors into saints. In all reality my eyes have not seen the worst, and no amount of psychological distance, geographic gymnastics, self-soothing, distraction, denial, time, or even prayer, can take away the pain of knowing that in this world people go through these monstrosities everyday, in great numbers and on vastly higher scales.

Death has a way of slapping you in the face, insulting your intelligence, and in case you have any arrogance left when it is through with you, it dares you to grieve without turning away from a God who sees. Hagar called him "El Roi." I can say without reservation, that I would have been counted among the scores who have lost hope, not seeing the goodness of the Lord, as that ever important clause in the Psalm goes, "in the land of the living."

The mercy in pain is not something I can really comprehend, much less communicate very well. This past year I might have spent some time in the belly of a whale, I was so bitter, but I am coming to realize, that the redemption of my own story is not the point. Jesus said he came to heal the broken-hearted, that by his stripes we are healed and that was my hope when I left Mormonism. It wasn't about whether or not Joseph Smith was a heretic, or even how wonderful it was to stop standing on my elbows for an apple, trying to make circles into squares. Death- was overcome. If that isn't hope I don't know what is, and I don't ever want to lose sight of that again.

Distance

Who knows how far from where we are
our present trails are taking us,
we take so many roads
so many hopes are in our satchels
bumping along
through love
through apathy
through pain
through rising melody,
against bitterness and
stone and broken flesh--
toward answering a call--
that distance,
sometimes
the furthest
of all

and time is a gift

we all
go
from
sight to sight
vision to vision
however
long our present journey
may we make friends
with the time we have
where we have been.
where we must go.
what road we are on.
may we embrace--
the One whom all our travels are with.

Morning

Morning, is when
ages pass
since yesterday.

When sorrows and tears
and wiped away fears,
sink deep
somewhere down in
the pillow, lost
in dreams.

When light
pulls deep,
into light and new
breath-
it is
when
you hear.