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.

The Gift that Keeps on Giving

Not a bad place to go for a run. Just don't stop too long to enjoy the view, or you'll freeze.

Above Perry, Utah is a mountain called Grizzly Peak. It has a fantastic trail leading to its summit from Perry Canyon. It’s not far from my school and I enjoy running it after work on occasion. Last year I ran it several times through the winter. I learned very quickly that I did not have to dress very warm. The trail was steep enough and I was working hard enough that I manage to stay warm wearing a minimal amount of clothing even though the summit was always howling with wind. The wind chill had to be in the single digits or lower, and I would be wearing only my running shoes, a light pair of running tights, a long sleeve shirt, a wind breaker, light running gloves, and a beanie. But if I stopped for even a few seconds, I would start to get dangerously cold. I had to keep running or become hypothermic! I had to move forward or freeze.

Technically, this is Ben Lomond not Grizzly Peak,
but it's only a few miles away and you get the idea.

It may sound a little crazy, but I loved that biting wind. It motivated me to run a faster and more sustained pace than I ever would have in more comfortable temperatures. It pushed me to progress when I didn't have the motivation to push myself. And it felt good to work that hard! If only there was a freezing winter wind to get me to write more and faster! Or is there?  

I have taught many students who are talented writers over the years. While in my Creative Writing class, they produce prolific amounts of quality work. Later in the year, I will see them in the hall and ask, “Are you still writing?” Almost without exception, they say no. The reason is always the same, without a class to “make” them do it, they stop producing. There’s no threat of frost bite if they stop, so they get a little lazy about it. Without an assignment or a deadline, many of us are the same way. The pressure is off and there’s no one to push us out of our comfort zone.

So why not give ourselves an assignment and a deadline to keep us moving forward? The best way I can think to do this is by creating something as a gift. Birthdays and holidays provide excellent opportunities for us to use our talents to create something personal for the people we care about. They get a great present that means far more than a gift card to Chuck-a-Rama and we get an assignment and deadline to keep our creativity from freezing.

This is a portrait of my mother-in-law, Pam, that I made for my wife. 

A good friend of mine, Gregg Batt, has inspired me again and again in this regard. For Christmas, birthdays, and occasionally for no particular reason at all, I can almost always count on a beautiful and unique handmade gift from him. He has given me watercolor paintings, charcoal drawings, oil paintings, prints, and, my personal favorite, pottery. Every time I am the lucky recipient of his art, I think, “That’s so cool! Why don’t I do that more often?”

One of the first pieces of pottery that Gregg ever made for me.
Obviously, he shares my love of rock climbing.

The fact is, I know exactly why I don’t use my talents to make gifts more often: I’m chicken. I worry that the recipient won’t like it, won’t understand it, they’ll think it’s dumb, they’ll make fun of it, or it will just go in a closet to be forgotten about. There’s a million other insecurities that I use as excuses not to go out into the cold wind even though the cold wind is exactly what I need.

An oil painting Gregg made for me of my favorite mountains in the whole world: The Willard Spires.

When running Grizzly Peak in the winter, the worst part is always when I first get out of the car. I’m comfortable in the car with the heater on. I can relax, listen to the radio, take a nap if I want to, drive to McDonald’s and eat a cheeseburger. I don’t want to get out.

When we’re having trouble taking that first step out of the car, it helps to remember who our creative gift is really for. Betty Jo N. Jepsen once said, “These are the gifts we bring. The talents we have come from our Heavenly Father, and to honor Him, we can develop and expand them and then return them to Him.” We are told how we return these gifts to Him in Matthew 25: 40 which reads, “And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” Think about that for a moment: Each gift we give, made from our unique God given talents, is really a gift to our savior, Jesus Christ. That thought alone should get us out of the car!

I made this accordion book for my wife and put a poem in it that I wrote for her.  

The second I open the door to the car, the cold, winter wind starts me shivering and the only thing to do is run and run and don’t stop! It’s hard to make ourselves commit to creating something as a gift for someone else, and we’re sure to curse ourselves in the beginning. But as we get to work on it and keep working on it, we will feel our bodies warm from the effort and the pressure to get it done becomes invigorating. It feels good to have an assignment and a deadline again. It keeps us moving forward and that keeps our creativity from freezing. 

A water color Christmas card that Gregg made for my family.

A "horse hair" pot that Gregg gave me. He literally used the hair from my horse's tail to create the cool black lines on it. If I understand it right, you burn the hair on the still glowing hot pot right after it comes out of the kiln.

Yet another gift from Gregg. My wife refuses to eat a salad out of any other bowl in the house.

A Fairy Tale in Four Parts (Part Four)

Here's the end of my Truenda fairy tale. Parts one through three were posted over the last few days.


Just then, a strong, warm hand grasped her shoulder and she felt the cat’s claws yanked free of her arm. She knew it had to be her brother! She reached out to him and felt his hand grab hers, lift her to her feet, and pull her into a hug that was as warm and beautiful as the summer sun. She had never felt so happy and so loved as she did right then.

For a while, her brother carried her over the rockiest and most difficult part of the path through the cave. When they finally reached the outside, he set her down and she felt his fingers on her lips. He gently urged her to open her mouth. Tears of shame poured from her empty sockets. She did not want him to see what she had done, but she opened her mouth. She felt her brother wipe the tears from her face and then she felt something pushed into her mouth and, suddenly, her tongue was back in its proper place! She did not know how it was possible, but she wasted no time in using her newly replaced tongue to express her gratitude to her brother again and again.

After she had rested a little while, her brother took her by her hand and led her along the path away from the cave. The path was much longer and steeper than she would ever have thought, but, with her brother’s help, she continued steadily on. Her heart broke every time she thought of her father hearing about what she had done and seeing how horrible she looked without eyes and ears. What would he think of her? Could he ever love her again?

Just as she felt she could go no further, they stopped. Her brother sat her down and had her rest her head in his lap. She felt his gentle fingers on the sides of her head where her ears should have been. “I’m so sorry, Brother. I was following the cat and I…I…” She began to sob so hard that she could no longer speak.

She felt her brother wipe the tears from her cheeks. Then he said, “It’s okay, Truenda, with your tears, I have mended your ears.”  She could hear! She reached up with her hands and felt that her ears had been returned to their proper place! Immediately, she fell to the ground thanking her brother again and again. Her brother said, “Now that you have ears to hear, follow my voice.” He got to his feet and began to lead her up the path. He did not take her hand this time, but she was not afraid, because she could hear his words and follow them.

They walked for a long time. The path climbed ever upward and Truenda’s legs ached from the effort. The pain she felt inside, however, was far worse. She thought only of her father who had never shown anything but the purist love for her and she had disobeyed him again and again. She deserved this guilty pain in her heart. She deserved her horrible eyeless face. Her father could not possibly love such a disobedient daughter. If it were not for the kind and hopeful words of her brother beckoning her on, she could not have taken another step.

Just as she felt she could go no further, they stopped again. Her brother sat down and told her to rest her head on his lap. Immediately,  she began to sob. Her brother stroked her hair and wiped the tears from her cheeks as she poured out her heart to him. “How can you be so kind when I have been so horrible? How could you have descended into the awful depths of that dark cave for someone like me? I do not deserve it. You and father must be so disappointed in me!”

“Father sent me into the depths to fetch you because he loves you. I went because I love you. We will always love you no matter the choices you make. We want only your happiness and for you to return to us. And, if you trust in me, I will make you whole again.” With that he pressed his fingers against the empty sockets of Truenda’s eyes and, when he pulled them away again, she could see his beautiful face smiling down at her. Dawn was coming and, in the early morning light, her brother seemed to glow with goodness. “Now that you are whole again,” he said, “follow me home to father.” This she did with happiness filling all the empty spaces in her chest where only the aching darkness had been before.

And she lived happily ever after.

A page from my journal about the origin of the "Truenda" story.

A Fairy Tale in Four Parts (Part Three)

Here's part three of my Truenda fairy tale. Parts one and two were posted on 2/10/15 and 2/11/15.

A pretty serious "fail" at a collage of Truenda and the cat. Oh well, she can't see it anyway.

They had not walked for long when she felt the air start to turn cool and she knew that they were close. The path became slick, steep, and rocky and she stumbled and fell. Suddenly, she became frightened and she wanted nothing more than to be home with her father and brother no matter how ashamed she might feel. She knew that if she called out loudly enough, her brother would hear and he would come for her. She took a deep breath and just as she was about to yell, she felt the cat’s claws on her tongue and she found she could not speak.

The cat seemed to speak directly to her mind and it said, Your brother would be disgusted if he saw you now. Only empty sockets where your eyes once were and bloody stumps where you once had ears. He will not love you when he sees what you’ve done. It is too late. There is only one way to go now: Onward, into the cave.

Was it true? Would her brother despise her now? The thought was too unbearable. Better to hide from him than to let herself be seen like this. Only the darkness would love her now. The cat pressed the sharp rock into her hand and she knew what she must do. She cut out her tongue and dropped it in the path. Then, she reached out her hand until she found the cat’s tail and let it lead her ever downward into the depths of the cold cave. Even though she could not see it, she could sense the vast darkness gathering all around her.

Before long, the cat stopped and Truenda knew that they had reached the black water of the well where the spaces between the stars dripped down and pooled up. She knelt down and reached out a trembling hand. Here she was, finally about to touch the darkness she had longed for. But she was not so sure she wanted it anymore. Maybe she should turn and try to find her way back. But how? She had no eyes to see, no ears to hear, and no tongue to call out with. She could never find her way back to her father now. The cat certainly wouldn’t lead her back, she was sure of that. It was hopeless.

The cat, possibly sensing her hesitation, put a paw gently on her arm as if to reassure her and, though she could not hear, she imagined the cat saying, “It’s okay, just reach out a bit further.” Still, she hesitated. Why had she fallen in love with the darkness between the stars? Wasn’t it the stars themselves that were the most beautiful? Wasn’t the rising moon so like the smiling face of her older brother? Wasn’t the glorious sun, bringing new day, just like her father? She did not want this! No more darkness!

She tried to draw her hand back, but the cats claws came out, sharp and digging into her arm. The cat was impossibly strong. No matter how she struggled, Truenda could not break free. Tears poured from the empty sockets of her eyes and a dreadful moan shuddered in her empty mouth. The cat began to force her hand out toward the pool of darkness. No! Truenda screamed in her mind. I do not want this! And her heart called out more clearly, more loudly, more sincerely than her tongue ever could have, Father! Help me!

Part four will be posted tomorrow.

A few thumbnails from my journal that led to the collage above.

A Fairy Tale in Four Parts (Part Two)

Here's part two of my "Truenda" fairy tale. If you haven't read part one, it's on yesterday's (2/10/15) post.

A quick Sharpie and water color illustration of Truenda and the cat.

At first, Truenda was appalled by this, but then she felt the emptiness in her chest surge and grow as if in response to the cat’s words. Without quite realizing what she was doing, she reached up and plucked out first one eye and then the other, and then she dropped them in the path.

“Follow me, then,” the cat purred.

Truenda followed the soft sound of the cat’s paws on the path. She was frightened she might trip and fall because she could not see, but the path was smooth and sloped gently downward, and soon she was comfortable walking along behind the cat. However, now that she was wrapped in absolute blackness because of the loss of her eyes, she felt the longing for the spaces between the stars more than ever. The hollowness aching inside her was nearly unbearable. “Is it much farther?” asked Truenda.

“Not far,” said the cat.

Just then, Truenda thought she heard someone call her name. “Who was that?” she asked.

“I heard nothing,” said the cat. “Just keep walking.”

Truenda continued down the path, but soon she was sure she heard a distant voice call her name. “There, did you hear that? Someone called my name.”

“It was only the wind,” said the cat. “Now pay attention to me or you will lose your way. I will sing a song for you to easily hear so that you can follow me.” The cat began to sing a loud and unsavory tavern song.

Truenda did not like the song, but it did make it easy to follow the cat. She walked on for a time until she heard someone call out again. This time she was certain it was her brother’s voice calling her name. She stopped and said, “It’s my older brother. He’s calling for me. I must go to him.”

“No,” said the cat impatiently, “you should not. Not if you want to reach the cave. If you ever want to touch the darkness you profess to love and fill the aching hollowness in your chest, you will have to cut off your ears so that you will not hear the calls of your brother and be tempted to turn back.”

Truenda was torn. Her brother was looking for her. She could tell by his voice that he was concerned for her wellbeing and wanted to help her. She could not just ignore him.

“Besides,” said the cat. “Won’t you be embarrassed for him to see what you’ve done to your eyes? Here is a sharp rock. Cut off your ears so we can move on.”

Truenda felt the rock pressed into her hand. She really was ashamed to let her brother see her. And the ache in her chest was so complete, so irresistible. “How will I follow you if I cannot see or hear?” she asked the cat.

“Easy,” said the cat, “you can hold onto my tail and I will lead you.”

Truenda cut off her ears, first one, then the other, and dropped them in the path. Now, surrounded by nothing but blackness and silence, the hollowness hurt so much she thought it might tear her in two. She clutched the cat’s tail and said, “Lead on.”

End of part two.

I'll post part three tomorrow.