Thursday, January 06, 2011

The Myth of Horizons


In the warm glow of the waning day, I sat near the edge of a crumbling yellow cliff and looked out into the vast Pacific Ocean. The horizon, that familiar line that separates the ocean from sky seemed indisputable in its significance. Spreading in the distance, the water-sky horizon makes a neat line that appears to divide two worlds—unlike the heaving and interrupted squiggle-pastiche of the mountains and cities. But the line that makes us think “sea” and then “sky” simultaneously is a myth. There is no line between the ocean and the sky. The earth, sea and sky are in constant chaos, relation and exchange. The wind and sun evaporate water; the sea belches CO2 and misty fizz, the rain falls only to be evaporated by the sun in an eternal cycle—one eternal round. The lines that we seem to see so clearly between our bodies and our souls, our culture and nature are equally mythological.

Tuesday, January 04, 2011

Zion, Inc.


This revelation is brought to you by the City of Enoch Country Club.
The asphalt prophets have paved the burial grounds of the United Order.
We preach a theology of prudence. Why resist when the world has so much to offer?
The Gospel of thrift has become the Gospel of wealth.
The millennium is here, but who knew it would take place in a mall?
The beautiful name of Zion used to hawk merchandise to our masses.
Has Mormonism become a pyramid scheme of the soul?

Friday, May 14, 2010

Pumice and Water



(I found this poem in a back corner of my hard drive)

Pumice stone and ice cold stream water are my bread and wine this Sabbath
These ancient emblems of volcanic body spilled in atonement, at-one-ment for the land
The catastrophe blessing its priesthood
I hug cold stone-lined trails reverently approaching a tabernacle of ancient lava kneeling in still silent prayer
The windswept expanse whistles like a sad organ
My temple, my refuge, carpeted in green moss
Chipmunk, grasshopper, and dipper my congregation
My covenant with the earth renewed

-October 2007, Crater Lake National Park