Stand Ye in Holy [and Creative] Places, and be Not Moved

I have a little flock of eight Speckled Sussex chickens. They are a friendly breed of chicken that will follow you around and try to sneak in the house if you’re not careful. They love to roam the yard (and occasionally the neighbor’s yard, too) pecking and scratching and just being chickens. Recently, my son came and told me he was concerned one of the chickens was sick. It quit leaving the chicken coop and refused to get out of a nesting box unless physically removed. Of course, the box it didn’t want to leave was always the one full of eggs. The chicken wasn’t sick, it was trying to incubate its eggs. It was broody and its nesting instinct had kicked in. In was doing what so many mothers, animal and human alike, do when they’re expecting: preparing a home for upcoming newborns.

One of my Speckled Sussex chickens.

Wikipedia says the nesting instinct in humans “…is commonly characterized by a strong urge to clean and organize one's home and is one reason why couples who are expecting a baby often reorganize, arrange, and clean the house and surroundings.” My nesting instinct has definitely kicked in. I’ve just finished converting the spare room in my house into my “office”. I bought a secondhand desk, hung pictures, alphabetized my books, washed the window for what I’m pretty sure was the first time in 11 years, vacuumed, dusted, and more. Why? Because I’m pregnant. I have ideas in me incubating and growing and demanding to be born and, like any good parent, I want to provide the best possible place for that to happen to insure their health and safety.

My "nest".

This office is my refuge from the world where I can study and create without much (I do have a family, after all) interruption. Joseph Campbell, the mythology scholar, said, “[A sacred place] is an absolute necessity for anybody today. You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day…This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.”

Most accomplished writers and artists tell us how important it is to have a place and some time set aside to really focus on our work. A studio or an office is ideal, but a quiet corner of the library, a park bench, or a nook in your laundry room will all do in a pinch. We think of this designated space as creative places. Places for us to do creative work. But what’s interesting about Campbell's quote is that he called this a “sacred place”. So this isn’t just an office I’m writing this in right now? This is a sacred place? A holy place? Absolutely.

Webster’s dictionary defines sacred as “dedicated or set apart for the service or worship of a deity; devoted exclusively to one service or use; worthy of religious veneration: holy; entitled to reverence and respect.”

Part of the definition makes sense for the writer and artist right away: Namely, that the space should be “dedicated exclusively to one…use.” When you go into your office or studio or whatever space you’ve managed to come up with, you’re there to work. You have all the supplies you need, and the space is arranged in a way that’s conducive to creating. That’s just common sense. The last part of the definition is also logical after we think about it for a moment: This should be a place that is “entitled to reverence and respect.” This one is especially important for those of us that have a family or roommates. They need to understand how important this space is to us. Do you let your 11 year old kick a soccer ball near your newborn baby? Do you let your teenager crank his electric guitar in the nursery while the newborn baby is sleeping? No. You protect this space. The same is true for protecting our places set aside for nurturing our newborn or even unborn ideas.

It’s the other parts of the definition of sacred that get really interesting. Webster’s says that sacred means “dedicated or set apart for the service or worship of a deity” and that this place should be “worthy of religious veneration”. Does this mean that our office or studio should be a place set aside for us to worship God? Yes. I’ve mentioned in earlier posts that I believe that all positive, enlightening, and uplifting inspiration for our creative works comes from God (whether we know it or not).

This is a turbulent, confusing, and downright scary world to raise a child in. It is just as treacherous for our creative and spiritual growth. We must find refuges for ourselves if we are to thrive. The scriptures give us sound advice on where to find refuge. In Matthew 24:15 we are told to “…stand in the holy place” and in Doctrine and Covenants 87:8 it says “Wherefore, stand ye in holy places, and be not moved…” Usually these holy places are thought to be temples and churches. These are spiritual places where we can meditate, pray, and be strengthened. But we’re not going to go in there and open up our laptop to work on our latest project. So we need creative places to do that. Thankfully, our homes, offices, and studios can be made into holy places as well if we fill them with holy things, thoughts, and deeds.

There is a painting called “Woman Holding a Balance” by Dutch Baroque artist Johannes Vermeer. I think this painting illustrates the “sacred place” perfectly:

“Woman Holding a Balance” -Johannes Vermeer. An example of a "sacred place".

In it, you have a woman, who appears to be pregnant, standing at a table holding a balance in her hand. Her expression is serene, peaceful. In the background, hanging on the wall, is a picture of Christ during the last judgement. Before her is a mirror. On the table are pearls and gold. This is an artist and/or writer who is pregnant with ideas and striving to make a sacred place for those ideas to come into fruition. She has her work space laid out, devoted to her purposes. There is a sense of quiet reverence and respect. She has the mirror before her as a symbol of the constant introspection needed to keep your mind and spirit clear. The painting of Christ on the wall indicates that she is “standing in a holy place”. A place of prayer and meditation dedicated to the worship of God. She holds up the scales trying to very carefully and deliberately find a balance between the creative place and the holy place so that this can be a sacred place. Through the window comes the subtle, gentle light of the Holy Spirit, of inspiration, illuminating her thoughts. The rewards of her efforts are the precious pearls and gold on the table symbolic of the valuable creative work produced with the right state of mind in such a fertile environment.

Now, just to be clear, I’m not suggesting for a second that Vermeer intended any of this. Certainly not. I’m only using this painting to illustrate my points. However, that being said, virtually all of Vermeer’s paintings were done in just two of the rooms of his own home. This painting was no exception. So, in fact, Vermeer really was painting a picture of his own sacred place. I think that anyone who studies it can feel that even if they don’t agree with my highly subjective analysis.

As Vermeer’s painting shows, the best work happens when the creative places and the holy places overlap. This is the perfect environment for ideas to grow and flourish in. Where we have surrounded ourselves with creative necessities and influences and where we have given the Holy Spirit a place to dwell and work within us. Then we get this beautiful, fertile mix of the holy and the creative and these places can become the kind of “sacred place” that I believe Joseph Campbell was talking about. A place where we can “follow our bliss” as Campbell put it and “…doors will open where you didn’t know there were going to be doors.”

Wondering at Weasels

I used to work at Brighton Ski Resort in Utah. I spent a little bit of my time actually working and a whole lot of it snowboarding. For several months I enjoyed my time in the mountains. One day, late in the season, I was riding up the lift with my friend, Danny. He said, "I love those weird little weasel things that are always in the trees around here."

"What weasel things?"

"You know, those white weasels or ermines or whatever they are. Look, there's one right there." He pointed to a passing pine tree.

I saw nothing. "What are you talking about?" I asked.

"Seriously? You don't see it? It's looking right at us."

"I don't see anything. Where?"

"Well, it's too late now." We had passed the tree by this point. He seemed impatient that I couldn't see what was clearly obvious to him. "I'll show you the next time we ride up."

We got off the lift and snowboarded down the mountain. On the next ride up, Danny was watchful and ready. About halfway up the mountain, he said, "There's one. Eye level. On that little branch just left of the trunk of the tree. Do you see it?"

And I did! A little white weasel was perched on a tree branch watching us go by. It was quite possibly the cutest thing I had ever seen. If you don't believe me, just look at this photo of one from "Fur and Feathers 500":

Long-Tailed Weasel photographed by Brian at "Fur and Feathers 500"

It turns out, they're called a long-tailed weasel, and they're quite common. I hadn't noticed a single one the entire time I had been working at Brighton (or in all the prior years I'd been going there), but from that day on, I saw them everywhere. It was such a strange experience to realize that this amazing creature had been in plain sight all along, and I had never noticed it. I needed my friend, Danny, to see it for me and then patiently point it out when I was too blind to see it for myself.

In my last post, "Creating Spaces", I stated that the highest goal of the writer and artist is to create spaces in the minds of readers/viewers where they can meditate on the most important and sacred things. Just like the long-tailed weasels up at Brighton, these sacred and important things are often hiding in plain sight, but "...[our] ears are dull of hearing, and [our] eyes have [we] closed" (Acts 28:27). We sometimes need someone to lend us their eyes, so we can see and their ears so we can hear.

In Bishop Gérald Caussé's April 2015 L.D.S. conference talk, he said, "There are so many wonders in this world. However, sometimes when we have them constantly before our eyes, we take them for granted. We look, but we don’t really see; we hear, but we don’t really listen." He points out that "Our ability to marvel is fragile" and that we can easily become "insensitive to even the most remarkable signs and miracles..."

The poet William Meredith said, "The worst that can be said of a man is that he did not pay attention.” So how do we start paying attention to the miracles all around us? How do we reawaken our higher senses so that we don't lose our ability to marvel?  How do we open our eyes and ears so we can use our talents to help others to see and hear? Well, musician Brandon Heath might be able to offer some insight with his song "Give Me Your Eyes". Listen to it and watch the video on YouTube here. Some of the lyrics are below:

"Give Me Your Eyes" by Brandon Heath

Looked down from a broken sky

Traced out by the city lights

My world from a mile high

Best seat in the house tonight

Touched down on the cold black top

Hold on for the sudden stop

Breathe in the familiar shock

Of confusion

And chaos

All those people goin' somewhere

Why have I never cared?

Give me Your eyes for just one second

Give me Your eyes so I can see

Everything that I keep missing

Give me Your love for humanity

Give me Your arms for the broken-hearted

The ones that are far beyond my reach

Give me Your heart for the ones forgotten

Give me Your eyes so I can see

Step out on a busy street

See a girl and our eyes meet

Does her best to smile at me

To hide what's underneath

There's a man just to her right

Black suit and a bright red tie

Too ashamed to tell his wife

He's out of work, he's buyin' time

All those people goin' somewhere

Why have I never cared?

[Chorus]

I've been there a million times

A couple of million eyes

Just move and pass me by

I swear I never thought that I was wrong

Well I want a second glance

So give me a second chance

To see the way You've seen the people all along

[Chorus]

Both Bishop Gérald Caussé and Brandon Heath are telling us that we need the help of the Holy Spirit if we hope to stay sensitive to the beauty, truth, and miracles hiding in plain sight all around. In his talk, Bishop Gérald Caussé went on to say, "When we have the Spirit with us, our spiritual senses are sharpened and our memory is kindled so we cannot forget the miracles and signs we have witnessed."

There are beautiful little long-tailed weasels all around us (figuratively speaking, of course, unless your reading this on your phone while riding the lift up the mountain at Brighton). We only need ask the Lord to help us to see them and then actively go out looking. Only then will we have something worth creating in our art and writing.

Creating Spaces

Hemingway wrote in his essay The Art of the Short Story that "You could omit anything if you knew that you omitted and the omitted part would strengthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood." He called this the "iceberg theory" or the "theory of omission". Hemingway very intentionally left out what was often the most important part of the story leaving it up to the reader to fill the empty niche. The effect on the reader is sometimes a sense of the surreal, mystical, or mysterious or sometimes a sense of longing or, for lack of better words, a kind of aching hunger.

Christopher Terry, an art professor at Utah State University, illustrates this concept perfectly in his painting "Interior with a Niche". When I first stumbled onto this painting, it made me crazy because I couldn't explain why I liked it so much. It has everything that I generally dislike in a painting: realism, symmetrical composition, and mundane subject matter. Why then did it haunt me? Certainly the quality of the light is alluring (it makes me sigh and grow pleasantly sleepy every time I look at it). But that wasn't enough to explain why I couldn't stop thinking about it. Finally, I realized it was that darn niche. Everything in the painting draws the eye to the niche. It's at the center of the composition, the lines in the ceiling all point right at it, and it's directly above the table almost as if the table were only there to support it. Then, after Terry does all that work to draw your eye to the niche, he leaves it empty! I love it! If there were anything at all in the niche, I wouldn't have given this painting a second glance, but by leaving it empty, Terry creates tension in the mind of the viewer. Maybe we even ask ourselves, what would I put in that niche? What belongs there? Terry, like Hemingway, seems to have very intentionally left out the most important part to make us "feel something more than we understand". There are quiet, peaceful places in the interiors of our minds, "clean, well-lighted places", that feel remarkably like this. Do we have anything important there to meditate on?

"Interior with a Niche" by Christopher Terry

It makes me think of Mary shortly after the birth of Jesus. Imagine her in a quiet moment, finally alone in the stable with her sleeping baby. A few dust motes float in the crisp morning light angling in through the door. In the distance can be heard the commotion of waking patrons in the inn, the clop of hooves in the street, a vendor calling out to passing travelers, but, despite these sounds, for Mary, the moment is quiet. Luke writes, "But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart." Mary had a peaceful niche in the interior of her mind where she could meditate on the most important thing of all: our Savior.

"Mary's Heart" by Liz Lemon Swindle

The highest goal of the writer and artist is to create spaces like these in the minds of our readers/viewers. Places where they can meditate on the most important and sacred things. These things are so often what's right in front of people, but "...their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed" (Acts 28:27). This is the most beautiful service a writer or artist can do: lend them our eyes so they can see and our ears so they can hear!










  

There is a Crack in Everything

I once got the idea to write my wife a series of texts throughout the day to show her how much I loved and appreciated her. I started by stealing Elizabeth Barrett Browning's line "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways." Then, every hour or so throughout the day I sent her texts that listed all the things I loved about her. Not the most original idea, I know, but it was just a whim of mine that I thought she might enjoy. I decided the way to really show her how much I loved her was to list all the little idiosyncrasies that I adore about her. Just the funny little things, unique to only her, that someone who didn't know her as well as me might never notice. All day long I sent them to her, and all day long I patted myself on the back thinking what a romantic genius I was. When I got home, I found her a little bit upset. How could she possibly be upset when she was married to a Casanova like me? I wondered. She handed me her phone and let me read through the texts. It read like a long, detailed list of all her flaws and shortcomings. Though I certainly didn't mean it that way, I couldn't deny that was exactly how it sounded.

In his song "Anthem", Leonard Cohen sings,

Leonard Cohen

"Ring the bells that still can ring 

Forget your perfect offering 

There is a crack in everything 

That's how the light gets in."

I suppose that's what I was trying to say to my wife in my misbegotten texts: It's her perfect little "flaws" that I love so much about her; that they aren't really flaws at all to me. 

Despite my good intentions, my attempt to woo my wife through my texts was an absolute failure. However, Cohen's lyrics remind us all that we need to accept our creative failures. It's through our "cracks" that we get the opportunity to progress and grow. It's through the very things we consider to be our weaknesses, Cohen tells us, that we gain enlightenment.

In a recent article in the L.D.S. magazine, Ensign, Wendy Ulrich echos Cohen's idea. She writes, "...it is crucial to understand that while sin inevitably leads us away from God, weakness, ironically, can lead us toward Him." Just as Cohen's cracks allow the light to get in, so too do our weaknesses allow God to enlighten us.

Why wouldn't this idea also apply to our creative weaknesses? Of course, how we respond to our weaknesses makes all the difference. Later in the Ensign article, Ulrich explains, "...we also do not grow spiritually unless we accept our state of human weakness, respond to it with humility and faith, and learn through our weakness to trust in God." I feel that you can very easily replace the word "spiritually" in this sentence with "creatively" or "artistically" and it would still hold true. In other words, if we will respond to our creative weaknesses with humility and faith, they will teach us to trust in God. By trusting in God, we will create the work that He always intended us to create. After all, "the Lord has more in mind for [us] than [we] have in mind for [ourselves]." (-Elder Russell M. Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles).

A Million Doors

I just heard a great song by Jason Gray called "With Every Act of Love". My favorite line in the song says, "God put a million, million doors in the world/ For his love to walk through/ One of those doors is you." Beautiful!

You can watch the (lyric) music video here.

The lyrics are below:

"With Every Act of Love"
-Jason Gray

Sitting at the stoplight
He can't be bothered by the heart cry
Written on the cardboard in her hand
But when she looks him in the eye
His heart is broken open wide
And he feels the hand of God reach out through him
As Heaven touches earth

(Chorus)
Oh - we bring the Kingdom come
Oh - with every act of love
Jesus help us carry You
Alive in us, Your light shines through
With every act of love
We bring the Kingdom come

There's silence at the table
He wants to talk but he's not able
For all the shame that's locked him deep inside
But her words are the medicine
When she says they can begin again
And forgiveness will set him free tonight
As Heaven touches earth

(Chorus)

God put a million, million doors in the world
For his love to walk through
One of those doors is you
I said, God put a million, million doors in the world
For his love to walk through
One of those doors is you

(Chorus)

Oh - we bring the Kingdom come
Oh - with every act of love
Jesus help us carry You
Alive in us, Your light shines through
With every act of love
We bring the Kingdom come
With every act of love
We bring the Kingdom come
With every act of love
We bring the Kingdom come

A Long Lost Friend

I was cleaning out the basement the other day and found a long lost friend in the bottom of a filing cabinet. It was a journal from 2007 that I had completely forgotten existed. Here are a few pages that I particularly liked.

"To the Stars on the Wings of a Pig!"
I knew I had something in common with Steinbeck.

If you can see the beauty in a rotting piece of pizza
dug out of a garbage can, then you can see the beauty in anything.

Not a great drawing, but there is just something I love about the asymmetrical balance,
and the mundane shovel sitting idly by while something miraculous is happening on the horizon.

Yūgen: The Beautiful Yearning for Home

When I was 12 years old, I went on a backpacking trip with my scout troop in the Uinta Mountains. I don’t remember very much about this trip except that it involved a lot of fishing. The thing that stands out in my mind most was the day I got it into my head to climb up to a ridge above our camp. I think I simply wanted to see what was on the other side. In my rusty memory, this was a huge endeavor and no one was willing to do it with me. I felt like I was heading out to climb Mt. Everest alone. It probably only took me an hour or so to reach the top, but it seemed like a herculean effort at the time. There was no trail, just the loose, lichen covered rocks you see so often above tree line in these high mountains. When I finally reached the top, I was rewarded with a view that I have never forgotten. It was the first time in my young life that I had ever been confronted with such massive and overwhelming beauty. Nearly the whole of the High Uintas Wilderness spread out before me with its craggy peaks, snow fields, and sparkling blue-green lakes. It was as if the universe were expanding right before my eyes. I started to cry and then fell to my knees to thank God right there and then for such a miraculous gift. All that beauty… I didn’t know how to even begin to process it.

Not long ago, I stumbled onto the perfect word to describe that experience: Yūgen. This is a Japanese word that means “an experience of the universe that triggers emotional responses too deep and powerful for words.” Yūgen is a key aspect of Japanese aesthetics. It’s a word that they use to describe certain qualities of poetry, art, and theater that you can feel but can’t quite express. The word is often used to describe the beauty that is sometimes felt in sadness, suffering, or loss. Like so much of the Zen-based Japanese aesthetics, this is an extremely nebulous word that is left up to each individual to try and discover and define. The word itself is a journey; a beautiful and difficult journey full of yearning, full of longing.

Kamo no Chōmei, a famous 12th century Japanese poet and essayist, described yūgen like this: “It is like an autumn evening under a colorless expanse of silent sky. Somehow, as if for some reason that we should be able to recall, tears well uncontrollably.” 

As I set out on my own journey to better understand this word and, more importantly, the feeling it’s meant to express, I thought of a talk called “A Yearning for Home” by the apostle Marvin J. Ashton in the October 1992 L.D.S. General Conference. In it, he explained how we are children of our Heavenly Father and that we came to earth to “…experience a period of probation and testing, a period during which a veil would be drawn over our memories so that we would be free either to walk by faith and by the Spirit or to forsake our spiritual heritage and birthright.” He went on to say that “when we have a yearning and don’t know what it is for, perhaps it’s our soul longing for its heartland, longing to be no longer alienated from the Lord and the pursuit of something much higher, better, and more fulfilling than anything this earth has to offer.” How beautiful! A feeling of homesickness for a home we can’t quite recall, but our souls long for. To me, that sounds like Yūgen.

Certainly, this is the same thing that Philip Paul Bliss was describing in his hymn  “More HolinessGive Me” when he wrote:

“More purity give me,

More strength to o'ercome,

More freedom from earth-stains,

More longing for home.”

When I think of Yūgen in terms of beautiful suffering that’s beyond words to describe, then the ultimate example of this has to be Christ in Gethsemane. President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, Second Counselor in the First Presidency of the L.D.S. church, recently wrote about this in an article titled “Encircled in His Gentle Arms”. In this article, he writes, “I am overwhelmed with profound gratitude for what the sinless Son did for all mankind and for me… What the Savior did from Gethsemane to Golgotha on our behalf is beyond my ability to grasp.” Later he adds that when we are suffering, “if we will lift our hearts to the Lord during those times, surely He will know and understand. He who suffered so selflessly for us in the garden and on the cross will not leave us comfortless now. He will strengthen, encourage, and bless us. He will encircle us in His gentle arms.” The Yūgen-like paradox of beautiful suffering is clearly felt in the Savior’s atonement.

In this same article, Uchtdorf describes a painting by Frans Schwartz called “The Agony in the Garden”. It demonstrates the quality of yūgen perfectly. In fact, Uchtodorf described it as “achingly beautiful” and says “the longer I contemplate this painting, the more my heart and mind swell with inexpressible feelings of tenderness and gratitude.” This is exactly what yūgen is. Benito Ortolani, a leading scholar of Japanese theater explained yūgen as "a profound, mysterious sense of the beauty of the universe ... and the sad beauty of human suffering". Ponder this painting in a calm and quiet moment and see if it doesn’t make you feel that way.  

The Agony in the Garden, by Frans Schwartz

I’ve often tried, usually unsuccessfully, to infuse my own work with the quality of yūgen. The most recent example is a scene from my current novel-in-progress. In this scene, the protagonist, Kirby, is at school with his friend, Lily, when they discover another friend, “Big”, standing out in the rain. Here it is:

“Look!” Lily said and pointed out the window.

                I looked and there was Big. He was all alone, wearing a bright orange Hawaiian shirt, standing still, his eyes closed, a huge smile on his face, in the rain. “What’s he doing?”

“I guess he’s…” Lilly paused searching for an answer, shook her head and then said, “just being Big.”

“He’s going to be late for our presentation,” I said, “and very wet.”

“Yeah, we better go get him.”

Big was in the middle of a small courtyard that no one ever used. I didn’t even know you could go in there. It was just an ugly cement square with ugly cement benches surrounded on all sides by two stories of ugly glass windows. I suppose it could have been a nice garden or something, but the sun never found its way down into the narrow opening to the sky and some idiot decided to make the whole place concrete. It was about as inviting and comfortable as a Soviet era prison yard. And there was Big standing in the middle of it smiling.

We found a door to the courtyard and it was, in fact, unlocked. Who knew? Lily opened it and yelled, “Big! You’re going to be late to class. What are you doing?” Her voice echoed around the courtyard much louder than I expected.

Big turned and looked at us. It seemed like it took a few seconds for him to recognize who we were. Then he smiled even bigger and said, “Come here, you have to experience this.” His voice was quiet, almost reverent, but it carried so that we could hear it perfectly across the courtyard.

“Experience what? Rain?” Lily said. “I’ve felt rain before. Now come on, we have a presentation to do and you’re getting soaked.”

“No, really, come here. It’s beautiful.” Big beckoned to us with his hand and closed his eyes again.

“Let’s just go to class,” I said. “The late bell is going to ring at any second.”

Lily looked at me, down the hall towards our class, back to Big, then at me again. “You can go to class if you want. I’m going to go see what he’s talking about.”

“What? Why—” I started to complain, but she ran out into the rain to Big. I heard Big whisper something to her and she closed her eyes. There was a long pause as they both stood there getting drenched and then Lily laughed the most perfect, beautiful laugh, and that laugh fluttered around the ugly cement courtyard like a living thing, like butterflies, and the next thing I knew I was running out into the rain to join them.

I don’t know what the rain is like where you live, but in Utah it’s cold. It doesn’t rain much here, we are in a desert after all, but when it does, it’s always cold, even in the middle of summer. Usually the drops are huge things that smack you in the face and they are almost always accompanied by enough wind to knock you over. That whole “I like to go for walks in the rain” crap that you hear about people saying in personal ads is total garbage in Utah. Maybe other places it’s nice, but Utah rain, as a general rule, is not pleasant. Sure enough, this rain was cold, very cold, but it wasn’t the usual big drops that almost hurt to get hit by. Instead, it was made up of light, small drops that were coming down pretty thick, and there was no wind.

When I reached Big I said, “What are you doing? Let’s go back inside!”

Lily said, “Just close your eyes and listen.”

This was not what I expected. I thought maybe Big was just being all melodramatic and it was going to be like in the movies when you see some drought stricken farmer out in the field when it finally starts to rain and he knows his farm is saved and he looks up at the sky and savors the feel of the rain on his face, which, like I said, is total crap in Utah because it’s just cold and miserable. But, no, they wanted me to listen. To what?

I closed my eyes, concentrated, and I heard it. Ok, I know this is going to sound stupid, but just trust me when I say it was amazing. It’s one of those things where, really, you just had to be there. I’ll try to describe it and it will probably sound pretty lame, so you’ll just have to take my word for it. First of all, that ugly cement courtyard had the near magical ability to magnify even the tiniest of sounds and make them seem big, significant, and perfect. The water pooled on the ground everywhere making the entire place into a shallow pond that was no more than a centimeter deep. The little drops of rain hit the pooled water and the sound was amplified. Millions and millions of drops all hitting the water and all being amplified and it was as if I could hear each one of them individually and each one seemed important and beautiful and just right! While I could hear each of their unique voices, I could also hear the chorus they made together and they sang like a mother whispering to her baby, “hush, hush, hush.” Suddenly, I was crying and I didn’t understand why. Embarrassed, I jerked my eyes back open, but Big and Lily still had theirs closed and hadn’t noticed my boobing. I figured the rain would hide the one or two tears that had managed to leak out. All this only took 30 seconds at the most. I knew that I was experiencing something rare and unworldly. There’s a word for it I think, ephemeral maybe? Evanescent? No, they don’t quite capture it. Maybe no word can. Then the late bell was ringing. 

The funny thing is, now I know the word that Kirby was searching for. I hope I managed to give you a sense of yūgen in that little out-of-context excerpt. I think it’s a good sign if I can sum the whole scene up in a haiku:

I listen as the

rain whispers in my mother’s

still voice, “hush, hush, hush.”

Is that more yūgen? I don’t know. I do know that this concept of yūgen is something I’ve valued, sought after, and tried to emulate for as long as I can remember even though I never knew to call it by that name until just recently. Maybe it all started with that moment in the Uintas when I wept for the beauty of the mountains. But I would argue it started long before that. It started the moment I was born, always longing for my home beyond the veil, drawn to anything that reminded me of it, seeking to infuse just a little hint of it into my own creations.