INTO THE WILD....

Back from the desert....time was spent excavating and surveying cultural resources...those ancient people. It was good to be there even though it was work and with all the drama of a crew. It was good to feel the dirt and the crisp bite of early Spring breaking. This was a random event in my life. An excuse to hide. Out of school and out of life...trying to deal with the pain of being compromised. I came back dirty...... as water was a premium commodity. With a few friends I'm going back... into the wild....before they discover that i'm back home. This one is for pleasure or pain depending on how you look at it. I thought time heals wounds, I'm weak. I will stay out there and come to some resolution. I've thrown a little movie together. I honor you for caring and integrity in the face of quandry in your own lives. I know the Lord will bless you all. What will I find out there? I'm uncertain. After my friends return...I will have opportunity to explore the limits of life. Perhaps healing...perhaps not. I will take my scriptures and Stegner Books.

How can simple chemistry be so cruel. Even with great discipline and restraint...the LIGHT has dwindled...lost disappointed discouraged. For one who fights for and lives the life....how can this be? It is in the end... the PAIN. Even though I am not strait edge....I will not mask it. Self indulgence and self medication are cheap short cuts...a life not lived. I had always felt that nature and the natural were spiritual forces that would hide me from the monsters that chase me. The storm raged, darkness fell and .... seems not even prayer would reach the clouds above. The PAIN has muted all joy and hope. As you know... my friends live this hell daily. I have been blessed to elude such oblivion until now. Enough of me. What of you? What amazing people you are. The force of all of you collectively far exceeds any obstacle that we individually face. It is that collective power that will triumph. You who embrace each other in the sanctuary of your homes will generate survival and hope and joy and light.....and in the end bring about understanding, tolerance and perhaps change in the realms of high places. At the School of the Prophets, I found it interesting that instruction was not authoritarian. It was a bond of brotherhood in which the Saints shared their ideas of the heavens and of the earth..... Equal privilege with ritual and intellect and edifice. I long for such a ritual which has given way to correlation and compliance. Thanks for giving so much. In the end...for me, it is not about staying in the church as half a man or leaving to have family and fullfillment but losing my priesthood. It was not about choosing anything. It was more about how I am wired. When sacred places no longer heal...then what? DUST TO DUST....

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
--Martin Luther King