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| Our "Sacred Grove"--A stand of maples at Dry Creek. |
At some point in our lives, usually as teens, most Mormons receive a special blessing, called a patriarchal blessing, which is to act as a guide throughout ones life. This blessing is considered sacred and is not to be shared openly except with close family members. But instead, we are to act on it, sort of as self-fulfilling prophesy--a revelation we make sure comes true through our actions. A large part of our decision to move back to Dry Creek and to start the blog was guided by my patriarchal blessing. I won't go into specifics, but in it I am promised that I'll play an important role in the lives of my grandchildren. Although I welcome the world to read my blog, and hope you find it meaningful, it is for my future grandchildren I created Dry Creek Sustainable Living.
Therefore, some posts are meant primarily for my family, now and in the future. This is one such post. It is a talk I prepared for church on Sunday, October 28, 2012. It is not the talk I gave, nor the one intended to give. But as a writer, I have to discover what I want say along the way. Outlines just don't work for me. So, I wrote this first and then just showed up for church and gave a talk without notes. Writing this was my preparation. In church, I focused primarily on revelation and talked for about 15 minutes. This would have been way too long. None-the-less, I want my future family have record of this. If you like my blog, but are tired of reading Mormon posts, feel free to skip this one (along with the next four). I won't be offended. If you want to learn more, enjoy. Due to the length, I've broken it up into five posts, each discusing one of the five blessings I'm most greatful for.
Gratitude
Adam fell that men might be;
and men are, that they might have joy.
--2 Nephi 2:25
Introduction
However, I have always loved these things and yet there was a time in my life when I was miserable enough to seriously contemplate suicide. Obviously, even things as great as aspen trunks licked by lemon light, the artistic genius of the Beatles, or the heavenly flavor and texture of warm blueberries and whip cream are not where deep, steady joy is found. And isn't that what we all want?--a solid satisfaction for life that will weather hard times?--to be able to wake up and say, "I'm glad I'm here" not only on that perfect fall day, but on that rainy day when you pull up to your father's house and you cannot enter, but just sit out in the car listening to the steady rain, wondering how on earth you're going to drag yourself into that room in front of all those people after you've just found out your love for your dad is at a cellular level, so deep it's not even really an emotion, but a root, and his death is your death too. Or so it seems at the time. Isn't that what we want--to earnestly be able to say I'm glad to be alive--even in the middle of that kind of pain?
That is the type of gratitude I want to speak about today, which is scary, because just when you believe you have that kind of gratitude, life will throw a brick at you to check your sincerity. Also, it's easy enough to speak about gratitude when everything is moving smoothly in your life. What about the person in the congregation who is in the middle of a divorce or has just recently lost a child? What gives anyone the right to stand in front of them and preach about gratitude? So, if you're that person who has lost a child and you feel angry, please know two things: a) the bishop asked us to talk about gratitude--it's his fault, not ours, and b) I cannot possibly know what you're going through and won't pretend too. Instead, I want to share what I'm grateful for--what transformed me from a deeply unhappy person to someone who is generally satisfied with life. I'll proceed in the order I discovered or rediscovered them fairly late in life, as follows: prayer, marriage, the holy ghost, the ward, and a personal God.
1. Prayer
If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God,
that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not;
and it shall be given unto him.
--James 1: 5
As a child growing up here in this ward, I had an innocent yet deep trust in prayer. I still remember a couple of instances when I used prayer and believed it truly worked. One occasion was at a father and son outing at Copley's Cove. A group of us went hiking to that box canyon to the north, just above the campground--the one that has the waterfall coming over the edge in the early spring. I was maybe eight or nine. We all sat down and had snacks there. Some of the group climbed down in and some of us just sat on the edge and watched. Afterwards, everyone followed the loop around back to the main White Sage Flat trail. Halfway around that loop, my friend Jason realized he'd left his backpack on a rock, so he and I went back to get it. I think now that somehow we missed the turn off trail leading back to camp and instead headed up towards White Sage Flat.
Anyway, after some time, it became clear we were heading in the wrong direction and both of us felt lost. And so we did what almost any child would do--we got down on our knees and we prayed. When we did, I had a strong impression: if you head down slope you will end up in the canyon somewhere and then you can just take the road back to camp. We did indeed come out on the road, embarrassingly close to camp--we could see it from the rock slide we scurried down after breaking our way through a thicket of scrub oak.
Later, in high school and college, when I'd moved away from the church, I wrote that incident off. After all, it was common sense, right? If you're lost in the mountains, head down into a canyon since the branch canyons merge into bigger canyons, which eventually come out into the valley. No duh? What I didn't understand in high school and college that I understand now is exactly that: God answers prayers through the obvious. He is after all, the author of 'plain and simple truths' and we need to pray most when we are too lost and confused to find the obvious solution on our own. It may be obvious now that all I had to do was head down slope, but I'm pretty sure that if we didn't stop to pray that day the ward would have had to send out a search party for us. As simple as the answer was, in our fear, we wouldn't have seen it. And isn't it beautiful that the answer to most of our prayers are obvious and will come about through our own abilities, our own intellect, or own creativity, if we will but stop and listen to the whispering of the spirit?
After all, it is the problems with the simple solutions that are most devastating to humanity. If you are abusive to you spouse or children, the solution is obvious: Stop. If your marriage is in shambles because you go to the bar every night after work and your wife is sick and tired of raising your children by herself, the solution is obvious: Stop. If pornography has slowly leaked into your marriage and fantasy has replaced true intimacy with your spouse, one on one, in real time, the solution is obvious: Stop.
And yet hundreds, thousands, millions of people cannot make these obvious choices day after day. Humanity is miserable because people can't do what is obviously best for them and others. Why? Because we forget to pray. Day after day, year after year, we forget to pray, eventually believing we can make it on our own, that God is dead, that he's a figment of our imagination, that he's simply a concept by which we measure our pain. And finally we come to a place where we are so hurt and angry we cannot even consider prayer. After all, what has God done for us? Nothing.
I had brought myself to such a low and desolate place in 1995 and I'm here to tell you God answers our prayers even if we are so jaded all we can muster is a curse. I love the shrimp boat scene in Forest Gump when Lieutenant Dan curses God because of the storm. I had a similar pivotal moment in my relationship with God. Obviously, so much greater is our reward, if we can talk to our heavenly father without screaming profanities at him. But just as we will listen to our children, when out of pain, they yell and scream at us, God too will listen to us. He never shuts us out, never writes us off, never disowns us. There is always a way back. If we are simply humble enough to ask, or at least scream for help.
I'm not going to go into the details but on Thanksgiving night 1995, after spending the day with a wonderfully warm family in El Paso that just highlighted my own misery, I staggered down Mesa Street in El Paso screaming "I want to die" and cursing God for my miserable life. I woke up with an impression: go home, go back to Utah, just start over.
Although the answer was simple, obvious, it didn't seem logical or satisfy my ego. I was determined to become a writer and let's be honest, rural Utah is not the best place to launch a writing career. And as a writer, I was doing everything right: I was part of a strong writing community in El Paso and knew some key people who could help open some doors. Luckily, I was so miserable that I listened to the voice inside of my head instead of my intellect and pride. That's a good thing because that choice brings me to my next topic, Marriage. Had I stayed, I'm fairly certain I would have at some point ended my life and never have met Marci. What were logical career choices were not the right choices for me, an individual spirit of God, put on this earth for a purpose.
I cannot help but wonder how many people would be living alternative, better lives--not richer, more influential, more ego-satisfying lives--but truly better lives if at key moments they chose to listen to the voice whispered inside their head rather than what was logical? If we do not pray regularly, we cannot know what road we are suppose to be on as individual spirits of God, each put on this earth for a specific purpose. And if we are not on the road that God (not our family, not our friends, not our community) intended for us, we cannot and will not be happy. That misery has its purpose. It's God's way of saying, wake up stupid, you're driving off the road!
Obviously, if you have suffered a great loss, such as divorce or the death of a loved one, you will be miserable. It would be unnatural not to be. But if life is going along as a matter of routine, and you are still unhappy day after day, weak after weak. Stop. It's obvious. It's not working. God made man that he might know joy. You need a spiritual tune up. Sink to your knees. Pray. And be willing to accept the answer. Obviously you don't know as much as you think you do or you wouldn't be so dang unhappy. As Cheryl Crow puts it:
If it makes you happy
Then why the hell are you so sad?
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