Trials

Trials are never fun. My sister's car died this morning and is too expensive to fix. My car needed 500 dollars worth of work to keep it running last week. My sister is flying to Minnesota to drive a car of my parents back this weekend. My family is moving to China. I am broke. My car, even with the 500 dollars I spent on it may not last very long. My grades are not the best because I am working a full time job at night. My hair is messy today but I think I may want to go to an audition. Yes, another audition. I know I'm crazy. Life is crazy and I occasionally feel more at home with the craziness of life than the structured, normal times. But when the trials are really bad, after the initial breakdown, all I can think is that God must love me a lot to make me suffer this much. I know Jesus loves me because my life totally sucks. It's strange logic, but to the masochistic half-Jew, it completely makes sense. If I was having a good life, I would start to wonder about my decisions and if they were really in line with God's will. Maybe because I'm so busy dealing with the latest crisis or bit of bad news, I'm not worrying about my standing with God. My thought is: would he be giving me this many trials if he didn't know I could handle them with His help? Probably not? If I wasn't at least sort-of on the right path, I'd be punishing myself with unhappiness, so I'm going to be happy about the trials. My mother would always say: no one's dead, no one's in prison, so we're okay. Of course sometimes when she would say that Uncle Scott was still in prison, but I think she was just referring to the immediate family. Of course there was that time that Dad was in prison, but she wasn't in town for that.

Anyway, the point of this entire diatribe on trials is that in reading the account of John, I am reminded that Jesus knew what trials were coming and he still continued to help others and fulfill His mission. I suppose I shouldn't be amazed by this, but he knew what trials were coming. Greater trials than any other man had had to endure, and he was still helping other people through their trials. He was comforting his disciples after enduring in the Garden of Gethsemane. He was looking out for his mother when he was on the cross. He was forgiving people while he was suffering more than any mortal man could endure. How was he so good? He was the Son of God, and a God himself. He was at one with the father's will. How could we possibly be like him? I don't even know where to begin. But reading the Gospel of John, my favorite gospel, he is showing us in every word how to be more like Him. Examples are given, but more important to me are the words, the commands he gives. He is the light and life of the world. He is our example and has given us the light of the everlasting gospel to be our guide. We have to keep trying everyday. We have to keep trying, not only because He wants us to and has commanded us to, but because we really can't make it through trials on our own without that Spirit that comes from keeping his words and regarding them as our salvation. We have to keep going no matter what because it will never be so bad that we can't go on without his help. We are all stronger than each of us realizes. We are strong as keepers of the commandments and we are strong as those who can have the Spirit to be with them. And we have to keep going on, because the world is only going to become harder to endure, not easier. And to look at the highlights today no one is dead and no one is in jail. And more importantly I know that trials is one way I can become closer to my Savior; to become more like He is and wants me to be.

coming home

rummaging the children to get to the door
cement turns to fake grass covered stairs
iron bars follow me up and criss cross the
communal hallway houses the cold air and tonka
trucks lay with other fallen spoils of war
damaged and un lying desolate and abandoned
next door smells the seasoned beef simmering with oil
swelling the chill air with spices and then the
welcome mat lies looking always blankly up
unlocked the warm dark room awaits stilly wrapping
in the gentle deep exhalation and warm pins
prick my soul with peace
until the windows awake showing the black
and yellow noise all slipping around me and
lifting off the layers
until I am warm and naked

A personal God

Maybe it was all the Jewish holidays this last month or the struggles I have been having surviving day to day sometimes, but it occurred to me what a very personal God we have. I suppose many Christians believe in a God who is close to them, but not all do. My mother, while during Catholic school was never taught to pray personally. My father, raised without much religion most of his life, when he was studying to be a rabbi, would go up into the mountains to pray in true Biblical fashion. But we are taught to pray over everything. We pray over our 'flocks and fields' or anything that is important to us in our lives. We pray before sports events and theatrical performances. Coming from a place where prayer is considered to be something that you do in church or in a way that doesn't call attention to itself, this is still shocking. This praying over everything is still shocking to me even though I've been here three months.

The praying before plays was the first thing that really shocked me. My experience of theatres has shown me an environment very dissimilar to any religious environment. The theatre and church have always been very separate communities I belonged to. So praying in a theatre was about as shocked as I have been in many years. I have felt the Spirit while involved with theatrical productions, but I am usually alone in these feelings. The prayer before plays may seem normal to some, but to me it seems like a fissure in reality. So I always knew God cared about these very small things that I did, but seeing other people acknowledge these small things that God blesses us with was nice and interesting. It's just like the way God blesses us with personal prayer. I wonder how many times my dad would climb those mountains in California to pray? Was it everyday, or was praying only for particular guidance in a large and weighty matter? And I wonder if my mother said her own prayers to God as she chanted the set prayers.

Prayer is something very small, mundane almost. Except it is communicating with God. This was all inspired by rereading the account of Jesus taking on our sins in the Garden of Gethsemane. He called to his Father, and our Father. In the times of greatest distress he called out to his Father, as we all have called out to Him in our times of distress. And even times when we just needed to be clear on some things or talk about some things. He is actually listening to all the small things we say to him and watching all the small things we do everyday. He knows us and not a hair on our heads will be lost (or pulled out) except he knows it.

To my sister on her birthday

You are my paper lunch bag and my Toblerone
Honeysuckle afternoon, losing all my keys
Fire escape rust and blood Hibiscus flower grown
Walks in the cemetery, most allergic breeze
Napping with Winnie Pooh, and Piglet all alone
Finest film I’ve known with my favorite French cheese
My red ants in New Orleans and a dirndl frill
Waiting for late late ride, boxes packed to fill
Moo sounding cello and Nutcracker dance
Three flights up to front door. Three more: not a chance.
The big zoo in my dreams and all the Russian things
Our cone of silence, mocking bird, and all Ping's dings
Umweltverschmutzung, and funerals, except one
But together and apart, this life's sadness will be won
Lonely as a lightning bolt, one second then no more
Back to the home before the jolt, from its haven torn
But echoing we speak and never loose track, nor
The calls, texts and emails from the darkness scorn


So with your lunch and life, you are the outcome new
Of all your dreams and plans and schemes, to which you have been true
No more or less than missing memories
All falling silently, your birthday leaves

Rosh Hashanah

Happy Rosh Hashanah! Okay, I guess it brings back my childhood, but I always loved the Jewish holidays, including the solemn ones around the Days of Awe. Maybe it was my Dad trying to blow the shofar he bought and totally failing. You just can't be solemn at that type of occasion. He tried so hard and there was never any noise at all. We all tried and no one could make a single note that sounded like the Cecil B. DeMille's Ten Commandments when they blew their giant shofars to move the Children of Israel. They sounded like majestic horns trying to move the millions of people like cattle. Anyway, that was always a fun part along with braiding the challah bread and being allowed to eat lots of bread and honey. So, now my sister to baking the challah bread and I'm going to eat some tomorrow. I'm glad she's here to bake, or else I'd have to go to Einstein Brother's which I've been informed has individual challah, but they aren't that good. Tradition! Tradition! It seems like traditions carry on because they make us feel safe and secure. The Jews in the time between the Old and New Testaments were scattered and the temple was destroyed, but they still held onto what they believed through traditions. They didn't have the gift of the Holy Ghost per se, but they knew what their ancestors had believed and they knew the words of the Torah, and with their traditions, they survived as a people through many subsequent problems and diasporas. The Jewish laws may have been geared more to the letter of the law versus the spirit, but they did indeed keep the Jewish people separate from whatever people they tried to live among.

I guess hearing about all the laws they had back then regarding the number of steps around Jerusalem being as many steps as you could walk in a Sabbath day or how nothing that has touched milk can touch anything with meat, or vice versa seem like little things that shouldn't have made much of a difference to a people trying to survive. But all these little things became little things that made the Jews different, or special. I am not kosher and I don't adhere to any rabbinical laws regarding my actions on Saturdays or Sundays, but I do remember the holidays. Sometimes I just remember them in passing with fond memories of the past, and sometimes I search through the 7 grocery stores in town to try to find who sells Manischewitz macaroons for Passover (last Passover, and only one store sold any but chocolate chip which I don't like that much). I'm not Jewish, except in that my father was and I grew up celebrating Jewish holidays, but a part of me will always be Jewish because I remember these holidays and remember what they are in commemoration of. Why do I love these traditions that have no strict religious meaning to me anymore? Because I grew up with them, and even though they may have no strict religious meaning, they mean something to me. They remind me of my ancestors and the traditions they had to keep themselves a separate, obedient people.

This of course begs the question: What am I doing to keep myself an obedient person? Eating challah bread and macaroons definitely does not make me a more obedient person. All these outward celebrations and laws are not what makes a person obedient. What makes a person obedient is a change of heart and to internalize the gospel as much as possible. Feast upon the words of Christ, for behold the words of Christ will tell you all things what you should do. I suppose that more than food and celebrations, we should be feasting on the words of Christ. But as much as I love the scriptures, I still like lighting Chanukah candles, winning Gelt, and playing 'find the matzo' (which has no purpose).

Entitlement

Yes, I am better than you
And should be treated like it too
Don't think to class me with the common
I am as lofty as any Brahmin
Gourmet lobster tortellini, not ramen
And if I'm not given everything I'm due
I will sue.

Illness

I've been thinking about illness and healing in the New Testament quite a bit lately. It's probably because I've been ill and reading the New Testament. Healing is something that the disciples and Jesus do throughout the New Testament, but others can also heal in the name of Christ. Then when Christ heals he will in conjunction with this sometimes cast out devils, sometimes forgive sins, and sometimes neither, he just heals them.

Mental illnesses seem to be the ones that need devils cast out of the people who are sick with them, while just healing, or forgiving sins seems to be for physical illnesses. I was just thinking about how many mental illnesses are still influenced by evil spirits today. We have a few people in my family, including myself with mental illnesses including depression, PTSD and bi-polar, and while they may be influenced by evil spirits, most of the time, those that are sick are being influenced by their brain-chemistry, their past or other things that may have happened to them. I suppose their experiences or condition have made them weaker, and that is how the evil spirits began to influence them. This is all conjecture really though. Even with priesthood blessings and faith, it still takes those who are sick a long time to heal, if they ever completely heal. Sometimes the real gift they are given is the ability to be strong enough to live with the disease. Then those who do not have faith don't ever really recover. They find ways to live. They try to forget the things that made them this way. They try to forget their problems. They find ways to try to find happiness in life.

I was just really thinking about the difference between mental and physical illnesses and how Christ could heal them all, but in different ways. Then I suppose he heals everyone of us in different ways. His ways are not our ways and healing mental illnesses is more of a process these days, even with the diivine help of the Lord. But learning to perfect ourselves and be more like Jesus is also a process. We all seem to learn and heal and grow line upon line, precept on precept.

I am very glad the Lord healed on the Sabbath. Being sick on the Sabbath is not fun, and I'm very glad blessings and other ministrations are welcomed and encouraged on the Sabbath.

Wilt

Evil all around
Chemical green grass I’ve found
Too green and too straight
To allow curving cusps create
Colors forced to perfection
No rot decay to allow reflection
Alternative banished

Burn Burn and fire turn
All dross into ways to learn
Grow and ash I know
Scorched and I regrow
No change, no fire, standing
Still waiting, fearful of expanding
Wilt

belong

I don't belong
Where my sorrow sings a song
My joy cries all day long
And mother says nothing is wrong
Wrong. I don't belong.

Where then is my home?
Am I a stranger lost?
Do I merely roam?
How far should space exhaust?

I'll never be fit for here
Inside me is lonely
But I fit so perfectly
I don't belong, but I'll be near.

How I feel

I do not hunger except for you
And the softest way you say: untrue
Me and everything I say and do
I am untrue to me and you

But if I am I know it well
And you know so I do not tell
Fissured cracked, a broken belle
Beauty fading, a death knell

You see the fear I hide
Bleeding pain always denied
Monster strong living inside
Eating me alive. I've died.

Partially and living is hard
Breathing by machine yard by yard
Perpetually scarring and scarred
Bleeding internally, exterior hard

But now your soft touch I crave
Your voice upon my earlobes lave
Peace given, when pain I gave
You tried but there's nothing left to save

I'll cause you pain I daresay
So, cause me more and go away
Or take pain out on me alway'
Love will my pain allay

P.S. This is just a poem about nothing. Don't read into it.

Too too too tired

Chemicals kick me to no effect
Dew douses me but I’m not wet
Fading fast, fading slow
I have nowhere else to go
Sleep forbidden
Trying tiredness hidden
But inevitable escape
Naps inconvenient I make
Dipping in and out of sleep
Try to swim but going under deep
Falling jerk again I wake
Unaware of seconds slaked
Uncounted time lost again
Lord, strength to me lend
Then the darlings start to stir
Idiotic questions and queries heard
Stories told and discussions snug
People wake me like no drug
I think I hate them until the sun
Rises and out they come

Done

Crazy unreal you call my view
Strange and odd I would seem to you
Understanding ugly dark surreal
From the disturbed night I steal
But sunny days they don't know
I let no indication show
Hand raised I want to say
The poem
She is me long ago
Not demented but looking for a place to go
Hating and adoring are more possible things
Like twines of the same string
She is I and I am me
My hand goes down, I won't let them see

Weather

Cool and hail predicted
Sun he interdicted
Damp rain feared
Cool breeze cheered
Weather channel drenched
My interest quenched
Internet digests
Of weather to report
More import than quests
Foreign and my retort
Temperature treatise
For our location
Far, too far to meet us
Concerned about situation
No words soft
No feelings aloft
Subdued, no word spoken
Weather the single token
I then smile
Where weather is concerned
I don’t count miles

Four

4 am and the body
Sags, a puppet
With nothing left
Being held up
By stimulant and sturdy
Front desk

Caving the curvature
Frames the top and drop
To the floor
Empty inside, no more
On elbows body bowing
A husk

Backpack

Hauling heavy straps
Weighing down traps
Strength slowly taps
Longing for loss of gravity
Free from polyester fetters
Creeping towards morbidity
A shell full of books and letters
Hunched on my back
My education in chains calling
All the information my head lacks
Knowledge slowly sprawling
From my back to my head
From books brimming with
In the dark slight bouncing
Words unbound now shift
No longer tiny tomes trouncing
Muscles tighter trying
Knowledge into them seeping
Carrying a load no weeping
Too much and I begin crying

I cannot stop until my back carries nothing
And my brain lets nothing more in
That would be something

Jewish-Mormon Heritage

I'm feeling Jewish. Yeah, that doesn't happen that often and it has been inspired by my New Testament class. As a Mormon Cashew (half-Catholic, half-Jew, all Mormon) I usually feel particularly Jewish around Chanukah, Purim, Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, and Passover. But in my New Testament class we are reading a book: Between the Testaments which goes over the history of what happened between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New Testament. I really had never studied this particular part of history before. I knew about the rebuilding of Jerusalem, but I never was really sure when the Maccabees came into the historical record. Maccabees, for those who don't know are a Jewish family who fought against the Greeks who destroyed the temple and persecuted the Jews in Judea. We tell the story of the Maccabees every year at Chanukah. We have innumerable picture books and children's books at home from which I learned about how the Maccabees (meaning Hammer) fled to the hills after attacking the Greeks and staged a guerrilla war, which they finally won. When they came back into Jerusalem, they needed to clean the temple which had been desecrated by the Greeks and rededicate it. They needed sacred oil, prepared and dedicated by the priests to light the temple Menorah (which should always be lit) and rededicate the temple. According to my beloved picture books, they looked everywhere, but they could only find enough oil to burn in the Menorah for one night. The miracle of Chanukah is that the Menorah burnt on that oil for eight nights, which is how long it took for the priests to consecrate the oil.

This is story I knew from celebrating Chanukah growing up, but it is interesting to now learn about what was happening in the world around the Maccabees. I never knew who the Greeks who were attacking them really were and why they were attacking, except that the Jews were always getting attacked. It seems strange to only now be learning about Antiochus IV of the Seleucid Empire and his relations with the Jews and the Romans which led to the atrocities carried out against the Jews. It is only now that I am learning about the real history, that I am realizing the gaps in my own knowledge. The difference between the stories I was told and the real history of what happened is stark.

You are probably wondering why learning about this historical time period in particular is making me remember my Jewish heritage. I don't know. I always loved various parts of the Old Testament. I felt akin to those people who were somehow distantly related to me. My connection to those old prophets translated to feeling a strong connection to the old prophets in the Book of Mormon. But, besides loving the gospels and the words of Jesus they contained, I have never connected in the same way to the New Testament or the Doctrine and Covenants. I love the New Testament because I always remember the first time I really read and understood the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew. I didn't realize I had a testimony until that day. But as to feeling a connection to Matthew or Paul or any of the Saints mentioned in Acts: I never did. I felt a connection to John and the Savior, but those are the only people I connected to, and the Savior wasn't even writing. But, today in seeing how the Old Testament and New Testament are connected through these hundreds of years of history, I almost feel like I'm coming to the New Testament from a completely different angle. That seems cheesy, but it's true. And I'm wondering what I will learn from this chance to relearn the New Testament and if I will be able to not only become closer to my Savior but to also come closer to the authors and Saints of the New Testament.

Prose

Why don't I post more? is the question I'm sure some of you have asked. I don't have time is the answer. Poetry takes more time than one would expect especially if one is working, going to school, in a play and enjoys television. I will be using this blog to give mundane updates on the state of small forgotten things in the world. Do not be surprised. Do not be alarmed. Poetry will still come, interrupted by prose and one-sided monologues of speculation. Oh, I will also be writing about a class. Instead of the dreaded and tedious writing journals, we are required to blog about our impressions. I support this so any readers will have to share in the tediousness of my new school life. They will also probably learn more about me, which I do not support.

Clouds covering mountain

Stroking the crags with wispy fingers
Caressing troubled terrain
From deep blue, gauze now lingers
Secret the summit, dense the white refrain
Peak hidden from the sun
Much unseen
Mystery beckons me

Exhausted

Soothing voice
Hark me not
I have no choice
Drowsy day caught
My mind drifts
Into sweet deep dark
Monotone will not lift
Head to hear the lark
Shout! Loud words profane
Take me from the wandering lane
Swoop and wake
My breath from me to take
And force anew fresh exhalation
Brain startled back
Head jerks with no explanation
Away again from blissful listful
ness

Hole Reinforcer

Through empty eyes that stare
At me through broken tear
Hole torn and into space it weeps
No more absense complete
Trying to stay put but no hold
Falling to the floor so cold
Once ripped never mended
Tape makes worse to the obsessed
with uneven sticky mess
To be thrown away but wait
Doughnut shaped sticker?
I hesitate.
Divider so precious, will it be lost?
With only one hole shaming the others
Saving at what cost?
Can it be patched for a while
Can loss be detained?
Sticking both sides evenly matched
To see the effect, if it works
My constant divider, I've become attached
But soon another will let go
Now or next Monday
I'll never know, but not yet
Hanging on determinedly
I'll wait for the next hole doomed
Then let it go free