my writings

Coming to Jesus

Down Town. I’ve realized that Salt Lake City is a very beautiful city. It is square. The streets run parallel and straight. The roads are trustworthy: turn one corner and the next road is guaranteed to be the same straight in the squared direction. It is easy to find your way. These roads run straight to eternity. The buildings tend to match the streets, square. They rise up from the road and are exact to the edges. I know that buildings everywhere look like this to some extent, but here the exactness seems exacted. I imagine being a giant so big that I could run my huge hands along the sides of the buildings from top to bottom, reach the corner and change the ninety-degree angle into the new dimension that is really only the same as the first. At night the roads and buildings are lit by evenly spaced yellow streetlights. They reflect off the broad surfaces of the roads and buildings making everything look brighter. All the space that Brigham Young had built into Down Town allows for everything to look shiny, because there is space for the light to reflect.

I have a few hours before I meet my brother.

I get off the train at Temple Square. I walk through the green space that used to be a major road to the front of the Temple. I stare at it. It fits here at the heart of this city. It is exact, maybe the definition of exact. It is here on the Square, this gated block. And every block here inside this circle of mountains is square and precise, radiating from this central one.

It’s been a long time since I’ve brought myself here to look at the Temple. I make sure that I see the Storm Stones on the front of the Temple, to remind me of the omnipotence of God. While standing there I realize that in the last twenty-one years that I’ve lived here and looked at the temple I have never touched it. I walk towards it. I feel afraid; maybe that God will strike me dead in my sins. But I reach forth my hand anyways and touch a stone at the base. It feels like granite from the canyons shaped by pioneers a hundred years ago—my ancestors or at least people that could have been my ancestors. I feel the weight of the whole temple on top of me. Everything they wanted and hoped for. They are all inside of me living and pushing me towards eternity.

The stone is a circle carved within the great square. It is exact. I run my hand along the edge of the circle; a compass my ancestors use to push me back to a time when there was no exactness here just the starkness of the desert before they irrigated the valley and brought this life and greenery. I think how this place is everything their homeland across the ocean is not. The heat, the dryness, the towering of the mountains. This place holds us. They brought me here, and now the circle of mountains doesn’t seem to want to let me pass. This circle also reminds me of a Zen saying: “Life is a great empty circle.” There are no edges, just an eternity. Around and Around and Around, an eternity on a single directed curve. I am amazed that this exact square here can hold eternity.

I walk up the stairs to the east facing doors. When Jesus comes these doors will open to him, but for now they are closed against me. Intricate carvings in wood, again the same motif circles in squares. But this time with beehives: representing community and industry. Tall oak brought by train from The East: impressive, strong and locked. I had a dream when I was younger of Jesus being here. He was standing at these doors talking and joking indiscriminately with a large crowd of people that had lined up, and I was in that line. I can hear singing inside, a hymn so familiar I can trace the edges. A choir of angels or saints inside? I am here outside, but I sing along.

I continue walking around the temple, carefully touching each stone. It is obvious where much later The Temple has been added to, the quality of the stones, or the workmanship—just something. I reach the west facing doors.

A missionary sits on a bench. “Go on up there by the door, and I will take a picture of you.”

“Thank you, but I don’t have a camera. I’m a local anyways.” Watching me he has mistaken my awe and reverence for the Temple for that of the tourist first seeing This Place.

I find myself at the feet of the huge Christus in the North Visitors Center. Quietness. Emptiness. Space Expanding around him. The planets, the clouds, all the stars. I remember how much I love Jesus and how much I love this life. I have a picture of Jesus at home. He is surrounded by little kids and He is holding them and loving them. Although Jesus is dressed from old Jerusalem the kids are dressed like they could have been my friends. I remember to be good; not for Jesus though, but for the goodness and love that Jesus represents. And for the eternity that my ancestors are pushing me towards.

I turn my back and walk away from Jesus. He will always be here in the middle of this exact city where I can find Him. Outside this central Square I start to run, I’m not sure where I will go—to the mountains rising up, or to the lake, or maybe to the starkness of the desert, or expanding myself to the stars, and the great emptiness of space.

home - 2004-3-11