Winter into Spring: A Photo Journal

Living at Dry Creek so far has not turned out like I planned.  My health is unpredictable.  Generally, I seem to be getting better, but the pain is still up and down, and doctors don't what causes it.  One obnoxiously arrogant ass even told me I was crazy.  Anyway, for about a year and half, I've been confined mostly to my yard.  Although the creek is just across the road that goes up to Mom's, I seldom see it as it hurts too much to go down the steep slope and back up again; the pain doesn't  necessarily come that day, but a day or two after.

So, my plans for a great expanse of gardens has been put on hold.  I hope only temporarily, but after a year and half, I may have to start being a little more realistic.

Yet, even from my recliner, I have an amazing view.  Seeing deer and wild turkey is a daily thing, and even though I can't get down to see the creek that often, I know it's there.  In April, during high water, it's easy to hear it from my front porch.  The stars at night are brilliant; there is often the smell of cottonwood and creek bottom.  I can, I guess, live with an empty field, if the gardens never get planted in full.

Snow is a profound thing--especially deep, heavy snow.  Luckily, my brother Lloyd has stepped in to keep the roads clear and I have been able to simply enjoy its beauty.

 

 

Central Utah is changing.  During winter inversions, pollution leaks down from the Wasatch Front and smogs up our once pristine skies.  As I commute to work each day, I'm not helping the problem.  It brings a deep sadness.  Environment matters.  Our spiritual selves are not separate from our surroundings.  I'm not sure why people don't get that.  It's not just about Will we obliterate ourselves or kill off the polar bears?--it's also about, "Can you see clearly?  Does walking outside make you feel alive inside?  Do you feel a profound connection with what's going on around you?"  Pollution veils our connection with creation.  It is anti-spiritual.   

 

 

Yet, I count myself lucky.  On a whim we can roast marshmallows over an open fire on cold, windy March night (or just about anytime).  And oh those night skies!  

 

 

I'd rather not commute, but if one has to commute, an empty highway is the way to do it.  I don't love big, agribusiness, like modern dairy farms, but rural America is where it's at.  Out here, where space is big, and noise subtle, there is room for the mind to sit down on an old tree stump next to you and have a conversation.  Neighbors may be lacking, but in the absence of heaping humanity, there is the self talking to the self, and in the process a coming to know what really matters.

 

And occasionally I do get down to that creek that became my friend long ago when Dad purchased this property.  It still churns magically clear over stone and will still do so long after I'm gone.

 



 

There is the passing of the days, the constant change in light, the handing of day over to night.

 

 

 There is the change of the seasons--winter melting into spring.  The rise of the snow line and the return of green.

 

 

  

There is warm sunlight on an exposed wall--how it feels to stand there, sheltered from the last of the winter wind. 

 

There is the return of water, of light and sky pooled on the ground, or spun like angel's hair in narrow, rocky ravines.

 

 

And there is the pasture, open space, dreams. 

 

 

 



I Am at Heart Pontius Pilate: Knowing This May Save Me

I am at heart Pontius Pilate.  I not only know through pure intellectual reasoning that the message of Jesus, if accurately followed by the masses, would lead to world peace--which should be enough in and of itself to transform me into a disciple, whether he is the literal, only begotten son of the living God or not.

But, I have also received personal revelation that He is indeed what He claimed--the literal, only begotten son of the living God.

Of course, I am also aware some of the loudest Christians, many of which are right-wing politicians and their followers,  are not very Christian at all.  Their claims do not match their actions; their words do not match His words as recorded in the four gospels.

But that is but a distraction and has absolutely nothing to do with my Pontius-Pilate heart.  It's wanting to avoid the ridicule of the crowd that makes me a coward.  It is my desire to maintain the type of peace desired by the world, which is not true peace, but rather apathy--a call to silence and inaction--that makes me like Pontius Pilate.  It's my desire to be content with the status quo, to take the path of least resistance, to not be a martyr for any cause.  True discipleship requires personal change, which is hard work.  It requires taking unpopular stands.  It requires losing oneself, ones ego, and in a sense becoming transparent, so God can work good through you.  Sometimes, unfortunately, it requires sacrificing your own life.  Mahatma Gandhi may have been Hindu, but he was more Christian than most of us because he was willing to push the justice of Christ to that point that requires a choice.

Christ requires a choice.  A friend of mine recently lent me a wonderful book, Things of Redeeming Worth by H. Curtis Wright.  In it Wright describes Christ's description of the Pontius Pilates of this world: 

We should realize that those who espouse this philosophy are apparently naïve enough to think it will actually work.  They don't seem to realize that Christ condemned it severely as a way of thinking.  He told the neutral church at Laodicea, for example, "I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot:  I would thou wert cold or hot.  So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth" (Rev. 3:15-16).  Jesus is saying that people like this make him sick.  They nauseate him.  That word "spue," you know, does not mean "spit"; it means "vomit," "regurgitate," "throw up!"  And those same people forget another saying which is recorded five different times in the scriptures where the Lord has said in substance, "He that is not for me is against me (see Matt 12:30; Mark 9:40; Luke 9:50, 11:23; 2 Ne. 10:16)." (Wright, 39-40)

This is because the message of Christ is justice and neutrality is the enemy of justice.  In a neutral world the message of Christ cannot be carried out.  Stability in a wicked world is, well, wickedness.  Gandhi had to upset the status quo to bring the justice of Christ to the untouchables.  He knew that the real enemy of India was not England, but the people of India themselves.  He understood that social change could not occur without spiritual change, that you can't win a revolution playing the enemy's game because the real enemy is not outside, but inside, in the heart where Pontius Pilate is willing to turn Christ over to the mobs in order to avoid ridicule or a loss of status.

And that is where I am.  And that is where I do not want to be, for I know Christ comes as a knife.  Evil is real.  Sooner or later we must choose ultimately who we will serve.

This is what I know:  God is real.  I have felt his presence.  Today, in church, a sixteen or seventeen year old boy gave a short talk as a "youth speaker."  In my church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints, members of the congregation, not the clergy, usually give the spiritual messages in church, and each Sunday two of those speakers are youth.  Anyway, as this young man delivered a very spiritual message, I literally saw a glow around him, which I know was the Holy Ghost.  I don't know why I could see it, but I do know I did, and it is not the first time I've seen that glow.

I saw that same glow as a child once when a woman was giving a talk on baptism.  Later, in college, when I was no longer active in church, and learned color theory, I attributed that glow to the fact that speakers often are wearing a dark color, blue or black, and are standing in front of a white wall.  Sure enough, there is a natural glow around dark objects set against white.

But that is not the glow I witnessed today--there is no comparison in the intensity.  The two speakers that followed this young man also wore dark suits and there was no glow.  What I saw, without doubt, was the Holy Ghost guiding this boy's words.

I have felt that myself when I was speaking--when I could hardly speak what I needed to say because the spirit was so strong within me, and yet I knew what I had to say was not coming directly from my own mind, but that it was being guided for the benefit of someone in the audience.  I've also felt that a couple of times while writing.  However, I've never felt that at school, teaching, as much as I enjoy my job.

I've also had a gut feeling that Martin Luther King's, "I Have a Dream" speech came from such a place.  As articulate as he was, I do not believe that speech is the rhetoric of a gifted man.  It is scripture.

Ultimately, I believe in scripture.  I believe God speaks to man.  I have seen Him speak to others by actually witnessing the Holy Ghost guide their words, and I have felt Him guide my own words.  I believe in the four gospels; I know, regardless of how much later they were written, or who they were written by, that they are the words of Christ, and that if each of us, in our own life, will do better tomorrow than we did today at following those words, the world will not only be a better place, but will eventually will be a perfect place.  The words of Christ, if followed completely, can only lead to perfection.

I know that will not directly happen.  Satan knows too well that most all of us are much more like Pontius Pilate than we care to be.  Pontius Pilate was way more like Pontius Pilate than he cared to be, which is why Christ demonstrated empathy and understanding when he said, "he that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin," to console Pilate's tortured soul.

If we choose to be like Pontius Pilate, it will not be Christ who ultimately condemns us but our own conscience.  As I know too well where my heart is as a natural man, I record this testimony here, publically, to make it harder for me to retract into the shadows when someone is literally or metaphorically executed for standing for truth.  Because honestly, I'm not sure that without some practice, that I'm strong enough to hide my Jewish neighbor when the Nazi's are at my door.  I'm not sure I'm even strong enough to lovingly challenge my other neighbor, especially if he's basically a good guy, when he embraces Nazi rhetoric.  And as this election is showing, that world where I may have to make a stand for the justice Christ demands may not be too far off.

Knowing I am Pontius Pilate at heart may be my only salvation.  It is difficult to avoid what we do not know about ourselves.