Unseen Echoes
I went to Egypt a few years ago, and I keep having these flashbacks lately. Of riding the elevator up that huge, lotus-shaped monument the Russians built, of eating falafel burgers at McDonalds, of counting the Goddess Hathor statuettes at the National Museum. Of the day the deaf man I’d never met proposed marriage to me from across the street in unmistakable sign language.
Of course I saw the Pyramids, the Sphinx, the Nile, and the
new library they were building in Alexandria. But the moments that bubble back to the surface and form my sense of the place are smaller things.
Our lives follow a similar pattern. Of course we remember the big events, and they can define our lives as vividly as the Pyramids define Egypt. But the things that really make us who we are come from the innumerable small moments of great importance. Some of the experiences that shaped me most profoundly wouldn't show up in a history book if one were written about me. Walking down a wild, rocky, deserted beach when I was fifteen, kissing in the garden swing one day, the time my daughter first smiled up at me; these are the moments that shine out to me as things that mattered.
Our lives are a mosaic of little moments: sunsets, snatches of songs, sudden bursts of illumination, strangers' smiles. Blink too slowly, hurry too frantically, plan too exhaustively, and they will pass us by, unnoticed. Take them away, and we're left with what we could have read about life and known if we'd never lived it.
gardens deep in sky
Fall awakens something in the heart. I wrote my first poem when I was six years old, sitting in a tree in autumn. I wrote of the falling leaves, and the advent of winter. I felt, even then, an ominous, enchanted
something in the air.
The mountains around my valley become brilliantly articulate in the fall. The scarlet leaves cry out the impermanence of life, but the hills stand behind them, solid and everlasting. Watching them is like listening to an Irish flute lilting a light, wistful dance over the steady beat of the bodhran. Autumn touches the transcendent, melancholy shiver of mortality in us. It has a finality, an overtone of inescapability, but at the same time a terrible, haunting beauty.
Spring is turning to summer now in my life. I sense still the lovely blossoms of springtime and young love, and seeing the world new through inexperienced eyes. But there is something of summer and golden days, of blossoms ripening to fruit, and of maturing relationships. And behind the dancing feet of springtime, and summer's deepening waltz, I hear the stately quadrille of autumn approaching. Spring is forever, until one hears the call of autumn. It is the season of change, of seeing things for the last time, in the sudden clarity of their impending loss. The thought of it awakens a dread, and yet a stronger longing. Something in us wants to see things this way, to know that they will not always be so, to see them for what they truly are. In some ineffable way, loving the transitory leads us to the eternal.
The leaves fall, fall as if from far away,
like withered things from gardens deep in sky;
they fall with gestures of renunciation.
And through the night the heavy earth falls too,
down from the stars, into the loneliness.
And we all fall. This hand must fall.
Look everywhere: it is the lot of all.
Yet there is one who holds us as we fall
eternally in his hands' tenderness.
- Ranier Maria Rilke
I finally read The Da Vinci Code last week. I enjoyed it quite a bit. What a talent he has for weaving together all sorts of esoteric and tantalizing historical tidbits into a grand conspiracy and a very entertaining thriller. So what if his research isn't all impeccably accurate? I say, the more you have to make up, the more talent it takes!
I also watched the LDS World Conference Saturday and Sunday. President Hinckley is 95 years old, and still going strong. He mentioned several more temples that are announced or under construction. One is the Sacramento Temple, not far from my hometown.
Here's what it will look like.
