now and endless

I love where I am right now. Life is perfectly balanced on the precipice of change. Important paths are converging and diverging, and I am poised to circumnavigate half the globe. The butterfly effect is taking wing all over the place and it's stunningly beautiful to watch. It is the hand of God moving over the world in infinitesimally subtle and cosmic ways. A glance here, a word there, the way the sun glinted in the eyes of someone you may never talk to – these are the things that are constantly changing our lives and molding our futures. We live in such a delicate balance, but it all turns out right in the end. Somehow it always does. Isn't that magnificent? Never have I found such a firm underlying state of peace. It's not permanent, I'm sure, but it's just the kind that could be, if everything stayed balanced just right. But nothing is more transitory and elusive than perfect balance. It's like at the turn of fall, when the trees start to think about changing, and the maples send faint little red veins through the green of their leaves in preparation for the flood of color to follow; or like in the initiation of spring, when the most delicate fragile green things gently push at the heavy layers of greyness and decay from last year's end, and the skeletal trees swath themselves in thin green clouds so faint you can only see them peripherally. We're talking phases that linger only a few short days. So achingly beautiful that it's what I look forward to all the rest of the year.

There is a strange steady exhilaration in everything right now, and I have the strangest feeling that this summer is somehow going to be really important, even pivotal, in the long run. I've been feeling that for months now. And I don't think it's just that I'm going to Italy for a little while. Just all the changes flying so thick and fast – new paradigms, new people, new discoveries, new situations and new revelations. Like some of the old boxes I've lived in for so long are falling apart and away and there are new horizons everywhere.

Anyhow. I'm running out of words. Sorry, apparently I get kind of obsessive about life sometimes, and then make you all listen to/read it. But life is cool, you gotta admit that. Endless opportunities. We live in the day and age where the line between dreams, ideas, and reality is fading away. No joke. Sometimes it's kind of scary, really. In an incredibly awesome way.

I just figured out life. Hah!

So. This is how it works. We are here to learn to find/have/create joy. There is no joy without growth. There is no growth without opposition. Therefore: not only can we find joy in adversity, but we cannot have joy without it. Or conversely; opposition and adversity (when survived) lead to growth, which leads to joy. Notice my word choice; JOY. Not happiness, which tends to be less deep and more temporary, and can come from things like comfort, pleasure, validation, sunshine and rainbows, etc. Joy, which is what God experiences and wants us to experience, must be earned, and it ain't no happy-meal prize. Which means that when they are handled rightly, the rough spots in life should end up being the best things that ever happened to us.

Does that make any sense?

Let's back this up. President Thomas S. Monson obviously understood this principle when he spoke in last month's General Conference. He related one of the most heartbreaking stories I've ever heard, about a woman who lost her husband to the violence of WWII and watched her four children die slowly of the cold and starvation of having to travel on foot from East Prussia to West Germany in the dead of winter. She dug the graves of her first three children in the frozen ground with a tablespoon, and for her last child, all she had left was her hands. When she arrived at her destination, alone and with nothing, she was in the advanced stages of starvation. President Monson said she spoke in a church meeting soon afterwards, "stating that of all the ailing people in her saddened land, she was one of the happiest, because she knew that God lived, that Jesus is the Christ, and that He died and was resurrected so that we might live again." President Monson closed his talk with these words: "My beloved brothers and sisters, fear not. Be of good cheer. The future is as bright as your faith."

I think to many of us who were raised LDS, this principle is sometimes fairly obvious. Sometimes not. It's all through the scriptures (check out 2 Nephi 2 for instance), the words of the prophets, and for most of us, life experience. I don't know why this just seems so important right now. I mean, it always is, but right now the concept of the symbiosis of joy and pain seems especially pertinent.

Let's be honest. We live in kind of sobering times. A lot of people are scared. Fear and despair run rampant over the earth, corruption and deception and uncertainty ooze from just about every corner, and there are wars and earthquakes and all sorts of stuff going on, both at home and abroad. We live in the day prophesied when "the love of many shall wax cold, and men's hearts shall fail them." And no wonder. Life ain't getting any easier, and certainly no less complicated. But ladies and gentlemen, we have it good, and we have nothing to worry about. "If ye are prepared, ye shall not fear." I used to read that to mean that those who are sufficiently prepared will be able to avoid a lot of the hardships that those less prepared will have to face. Now I'm not so sure; I think it's not how much we can avoid or escape hardship so much as how we approach it, and those who are prepared shall not fear because: A. they know Who is in charge, and where to go for guidance, revelation, and light. B. They understand that they can choose how they react to adversity, both internally and externally (read Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl). C. They understand that as long as they are doing what they know is right, nothing can ever be permanently wrong. (Conversely, those who choose not to live according to their better judgement will soon find that nothing will ever be permanently right. => Fear.) Those who are prepared know how to trust the Lord in all circumstances, and know that "all things shall work together for their good." Like my grandma used to say: "Everything turns out all right in the end, and if it ain't right yet, it ain't the end yet."

I did it again. I'm so preachy this week! But you know what I mean. Actually, I think this is mostly just for me; I've realized recently how grateful I am for the rough things I've had to go through - nothing hugely tragic or heart-wrenching, but you know. Everyone hits points in their lives when they feel like they are living by a thread. It's truly amazing how much richer my life has become after I've come out of those dark spots. And man, how grateful I am for the strength of that little thread!

So all I'm trying to say is, chin up. Be of good cheer, because you don't necessarily have to eke out a meager survival from those hard times if you do your best to squeeze every drop of wisdom you can get out of that lemon. And as to the future, guys, it's gonna be great. Crazy, but great. :)

Let's be friends, people!

Hmm. Life is so interesting and turbulent right now. It's kind of incredible really; this last week has been eventful enough to fill a month, and this last month has been enough probably to fill almost a year. Not in any really obvious way though. Sometimes paradigm shifts fall thick and fast.

One of the big things that's struck me again recently is the overwhelming need for gratitude in our lives; for the very air we breathe, and especially for those who breathe it with us. People, we have so much to be grateful for. If you are reading this, listen up. Exhibit A; you can read. Props to you. Literacy and education are the lot of a privileged few in our wide world. B; you have access to a computer and knowledge of how to use it. You have the most sophisticated networking, computing, research, and communication technology known to man at your fingertips. C; you probably live in America, or some other first-world English-speaking country, or you have lived there because that's where you met me. Don't even get me started on that. D; you have the time and leisure to read this at all and give thought to your identity, your life-direction, your own potential, and you are able to choose how to use the time you have been given. Seriously folks, we've got it good. And no, I'm not trying to guilt-trip anyone into gratitude, because that totally doesn't work.

It just hits me now and then how ridiculously blessed I have been in so many ways. For starters: I can't really remember a time when I have NOT been surrounded by really wonderful, loving, supportive, amazing, outstanding people. You are all awesome. Thank you for your love, patience, and kindness. Most of you will probably never know how much I have learned from you personally. Many of you I continue to learn from. A few of you have changed my life in more significant ways than you may ever realize.

I believe that people are basically good. I believe that each of us is a son or daughter of God, that He loves us and expects us to live up to our full potential, which is usually much greater than any of us would dare to imagine. I believe that each person has the potential to do much good, to become truly great, and that there is a spark of divinity in each soul which propels us towards living meaningful lives and surrounding ourselves with that which is beautiful, praiseworthy, light, and good. I believe there is a light in your eyes. You have the power to make something of yourself. One of my favorite quotes (I wish I remembered who it was from exactly): “There is little difference between the great men and women of the world and those who have wasted their lives. Those who have been successful have simply made better decisions.”

So yeah, okay, I am kind of waxing preachy. I'll just say this much more: guys, be nice to each other. People are cool; every one has something glorious and great inside them, and at some point every one has or will have something inside them that is incredibly wounded and raw. We've all been there. Let's try to see each other not only as human beings, but as people. Let's try to see each other as what we could be. And let us remember that nobody can get there alone.

In summary, let's be friends. And let's all try a little harder to understand what that means.

Conference photos you won't see in the Ensign.

Honoring the Lizard of Oz

This is from the first time I met the beardies. They belonged to the super sweet family I was working for at the time, but they are ours now. Their names are Crikers and Beaut, in honor of the late Steve Erwin, I believe. They look fearsome for the first thirty seconds or so, and then they just look sort of earnestly vacant. What surprised me most was their fragility, and warmth. Normally when I think of a lizard, say, an iguana, I think of something cold and slimy-hard like a crab, or leathery like that little rubbery plastic alligator we had for years until its bottom jaw eventually got ripped off by a couple of vigorously well-meaning tykes. But these little guys, just beneath their fearsomely spiky skins (which looked almost like exoskeletons, but were thinner than mine), were as soft and delicate-boned as rabbits. One hung down the front of my shirt like a huge brooch, curling his sharp little claws into my mercifully thick sweater. The other draped himself across my shoulder. Mom, who was with me, held one in the crook of her arm like a baby and rocked it for awhile. She discovered that when she turned, the lizard would keep his head in the same place and let his little body pivot around it like a door-hinge. The one I was holding did that too. One of the Thomson boys said his grandmother’s chickens do the same thing. He said he could lift any of them up, down, side to side, and it would stretch its little neck as far as it could to keep its head at the same point on the x, y, and z planes as it had started. With that kind of 3D precision, I think we should start hiring lizards and chickens to be fighter pilots. Who knows? World peace could be just around the corner.

Supermassive Black Hole

Last night dreamed big again. I don't remember what I started out doing, something social but boring I figure. It must have been boring, because somehow I got detached from the globe and started drifting out into space. I picked up speed the farther I went, and wrapped my arms around my head to ward off all the planets and stars I was bumping into along the way. There were lots of glimmering clouds and arms of galaxies with stars and all sorts of stuff in them, and as I flew by I got to thinking I must be on some sort of "Powers of Ten" journey and would soon be able to see the whole universe before I drifted off into infinite space. I didn't get that far, but far enough out to see a whole bunch of individual galaxies. Many of the spiral ones had rays and curtains of light refracting out in all colors from supermassive black holes at their cores. As I passed through one of these curtains/columns of iridescent light I felt a tug from the immense gravitational hurricane at the center and started to worry. The pull of the black hole was such that it sent ripples and distortions through all of the surrounding light, and felt like a current pulling towards a maelstom in the middle of the sea. So I started to swim, and barely reached the other side of the light/rainbow/gravity column before I would've hit the event horizon. I kept drifting on, a little shook up, knowing that with all these supermassive black holes floating around and me with neither rudder nor engine, there was only so long I could last. I hit the next gravity column (which was really quite beautiful, like rainbows and the aurora borealis - they all were that way), felt that massive tug and thought that was it. But when I got to the event horizon, the great heavy darkness in front of me dissolved and changed, and I stood up on the floor of a room covered and lined with old brown paper sacks. There was some kind of square black processing machine (like the x-ray machines you put your stuff through in an airport) on a long fold-up table that was slowly sucking in and digesting one long sheet of this rainbow material, construction paper or something, although nothing was coming out on the other side. There were two or three people in the room: Krystin and Allison were there, and maybe one or two others. I think I was slightly annoyed, or just puzzled - I don't remember, because then I woke up.

Black and White and Red all over...

Cover them in black and white stripes. Dust and picks drum the red clay road, kicking up rusty clouds the size of carpetbaggers' pockets.

Humdrum rumbles the hole in the window – sucks downwind and I hear the rhythm of the men on the road. Their faces are rosy as the pale sky cools. A magpie lands on an old barn. Coal piles shift and crackle under sifted snow next to an iron-red stove.

The children cry as their mothers knead. Flour sifts through the air around them, cottony clouds, sticky on the tongue. The black bowls fill with sugar and cherries. The ovens gape their wide red mouths. They are first fed, then feed.

Black skirts swim around my ankles, the rim of white hugs my cheekbones as I smile. I hold a thick red book above my head, its pages flap open at the vaulted rafters. Quiet now. The children are fed, their books are open, the room is cold, their noses are red. Clouds roll blankly against the iron windows.

Appleskin breaks at the blade of a knife. The flesh under the blood red is snowy, and the seeds nestle like negative diamonds deep at the heart, dark and smooth as the pupils of eyes.

Listen to a black violin. The man under his snowy hair strokes the strings, sounds like the color of your heart.

The man's hands raise against the air. His shirt is white. The gun is black, and quick, and dark. Death follows in flowing scarves of red.

Newborn cries, the whites of its eyes and the red little mouth are round. Black is the tiny fuzz of hair. You are newer than copper pennies that glint like fire on the asphalt.

A beat of drums pounds red in your bones as you run from the moon, bathing you in white, in silver, in the colors of the old. You breathe hard with your red mouth and run and run and run. You run from the shadows, and you run from the light. You run from the only thing you cannot leave behind. You run, maybe forever, into the blackest night you ever saw.

One day the road will end, and the sun will set and flush against sharp black mountains. You will pause for breath then, and you will see, in the distance, a humble white light. You will watch the sun and say a prayer, and then you will run home.