Twilight
Tonight, right around dusk, I went for a walk where the dim light of Provo lights fades to deep Sapphire, then the emerging stars and a crescent moon, like a lunar profile looking down over the Westward Mountains at the sullen glow of an obscured sun.
I can’t concentrate very long. It’s the prayer of the adult onset ADHD-er. “Father, forgive me for I can’t stop thinking about TV shows.”
But I stretched out my mind deeply as I could, making my soul rigid like a tuning fork, that perhaps I might hear a signal from deep space, something, anything.
I have important things to do. To raise my family. I have completed, or will complete soon my major task in this life—to purify a generation. My father before me was subjected to every vice of the world, and me to almost none (I found out in my last conversations with him the things that he shielded me from), and my children are in Primary learning hymns and having nightly scripture study.
I feel a deep and abiding sense like something is brewing with the Constitution. It is a spark given to man, like Prometheus’s fire, to deliver them from tyranny. That their freedoms CANNOT be taken away—they are given by almighty God. So, to get people to roll over on their rights, the first step is to get rid the Creator.
A hundred years of neglect has perhaps left it dimmed, perhaps. I am too feeble now to see things clearly. But surely it can be fanned into a blazing fire.
I don’t speak much of it, but I know for myself the nature and existence of God the Father, Christ, and the Devil. In the case of the former I thought it would make me a better man, but it didn’t. I still slacken my jaw at Victoria’s Secret ads, curse and whine at trivialities, sleep on the couch with the remote rather than in a bed with my wife, bark at my darling children over things that are not as bad as the very act of barking at them, eat twinkies instead of vegetables, and show up late to church and then only pay half-attention. Maybe that’s the point—I’m not supposed to be a good man of myself, but to acknowledge the goodness and greatness of God… and to recognize the farce that pretends to be god. I suspect that many other people have had the same experience, but don’t talk about it. In fact, I probably shouldn’t talk about it. This would explain (what appears to be) the baffling pig-headedness of “believers”. Oink.
I don’t pretend to know everything. Things unfold to me year after year. So, I make no pretensions (yes, my usual disclaimer) at being a good or righteous person. I am only a fellow-traveler.
I can say this for sure: everything ends well. If that’s what you want. What you really want. This life is the Test of the Soul. Not like a written exam type test, but an acid test. The Refiner’s Fire. One author I read from described it as a “voyage of self-discovery”.