Wonderings

I have so much to get done today, but I need to take a moment and get my thoughts down before they're gone.

Yesterday I received "Goodbye, I Love You" by Carol Lynn Pearson in the mail. I love everything she puts her pen to. I read with hunger through to book until I finished about an hour ago. With everything I read I come to love this woman more. Carol Lynn has such a beautiful way of touching the human soul. Her words make me weep.

I found so much that was so familiar in the story of Carol Lynn and Gerald. Their courtship and the dynamics between them was so similar to what I have experienced in my close friendships and relationships with girls. I feel that I have had some of the questions answered by reading their story. For some time I have wondered, what would have happened if I had just found a girl and gotten married? What if I had married the girl I once dated, never touching the world of gay dating? I know now that it would not have gone away. Hearts would have been broken. And that's just something I cannot do.

The beautiful spirituality of the book is not classic Mormonism. And I liked that. She spoke of femininity, of God and Goddess, of meditation and communion with Deity. It refreshed my soul to hear and read and feel the things she wrote.

But I found that while it is a first hand account, there was no declaration of what is, what should be, and how to act. There is no stance on the issue, no prescribed course of action for the church or the nation. There's only Carol Lynn and Gerald, revealed for all to see the deepest parts of their hearts. I think every one who knows this issue firsthand can see themselves there, watching them play out the very things we've felt ourselves.

There are so many things unanswered. It leads one to lift his eyes to the starry night and wonder. It seems that the knowledge God has given us is as each one of those pinpricks in the sky--bright, beautiful, and poignant. But such inky mystery separates them. What does all this mean? How does it all connect? And who am I, who so defies our understanding of the world here and beyond?

We truly are pioneers, as cheesy as the comparison seems. Though unlike the pioneers, I'm not sure what the destination is. In the barren wilderness I forge I can only raise my single voice and ask Him to show the way. He doesn't tell me the destination. He just tells me the next step. And when he doesn't even tell me the next step and the night gets ever darker, he gives me a hand to hold on to, and a shoulder to weep on.

I do not understand. I cannot even explain my own existence. But I know that I need God. As much as I need air to breathe and water to drink, I need him. I need to be engulfed in his spirit and his love.

"I know only as much of God and the world
As a creature with two eyes must;
But what I do understand I love,
And what I don't understand, I trust."

 - Carol Lynn Pearson

As I read this book, a 25 year old first edition copy, I marveled at how dramatically Carol Lynn's life changed. It was fascinating to read of her as a young woman, fresh in love, and to watch the way her world changed, and then to think of how her world has continued to change in one massive metamorphosis driven by divine design. It baffles me, to think of how my life will similarly change. It will morph and become something I cannot even now fathom. What will it be? What will I be? What will I know, and think, and love? The possibility that I contain, as a simple human being, amazes me.

"Today
You came running
With a small specked egg
Warm in your hand.
You could barely understand,
I know,
As I told you
Of Beginnings--
Of egg and bird
Told, too,
That years ago
You began,
Smaller than sight.
And then,
As egg yearns for sky
And seed
Stretches to tree,
You became--
Like me.

Oh,
But there's
So much more.
You and I,
Child,
Have just begun.

Think:
Worlds from now
What might we be? --
We,
Who are seed
Of Deity."

 - CLP