i.

The mountains were parched, their summer thirst unquenched by the usual store of snowpack. The reservoirs were dangerously low, and each day, the sky (and my nose) filled with smoke. Smoke that blew in from the California forest fires. Smoke that stubbornly coated the bowl of Utah Valley. Smoke that obscured the mountains behind my house. I griped on the way to work every day about my sinus infection caused by the smoke settling in my lungs. I couldn’t breathe. This is the perfect set-up for an apocalypse, I thought: smoke, sickness, gas prices increasing daily, widespread racism, unceasing global pandemic, approaching economic depression, dying rainforests, species extinction, global warming… These problems are piling on top of each other and any day now, the camel’s back will break. Soon, the whole world will tumble into anarchy. Or, at least that is how I felt during this extra-long, extra-hot drought. I wondered, where is God in all this?

I was driving up 400 South when a drop of water splashed on my windshield. Another drop dropped as the grocery store passed on the left. I was circling the roundabout when a third droplet joined the first two. Seconds later, my windshield wipers swiped through a torrent of water coming sideways. I rolled down my windows, letting the rain soak the interior of my car and coat the steering wheel with slick summer wetness. I turned up the volume on my stereo, and Bruce Springsteen crescendoed into the chorus of “Born to Run”:

The highway’s jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive

Everybody’s out on the run tonight but there’s no place left to hide

In the moment, that summer rainstorm felt like a sign: an interruption in a pattern of unsolvable, hopeless thirst. But one flash flood doesn’t solve a drought.

ii.

When I was young, going to church was more than a habit, more than family culture or a set of moral codes to follow. For me, church-going was a deeply spiritual activity. I fervently worshipped God and often felt like I received answers to my prayers. I always trusted that God was a real person. I always felt confident in my worthiness and ability to ask for and receive heavenly help. The possibility that I might lack sufficient faith, worthiness, or significance to receive God’s guidance never occurred to me.

Instead, my spiritual questions centered around the concept of God’s character as a parent and His expectations of me as His child. As a person naturally deferential to figures of authority, I prioritized pleasing my parents, coaches, teachers, and especially God. I thought that if those who held authority over me approved of my choices, then I would be able to know for certain that my temporal and eternal futures would be secure.  

The trouble came (and still comes) in situations where I had to make decisions for myself without guidance from authority—times when there wasn’t a specific commandment in the Bible or direction from a religious leader to tell me what to do—times when I prayed in search of an answer to a problem but felt nothing except silent ambivalence. In cases like these, I obsessed over every decision, convinced that I would fail to live up to God’s expectations and thereby put my own eternal future in jeopardy by making the wrong choice. 

I am not alone in my spiritual quandaries; my questions are old ones. The poet George Herbert, like me, seemed to feel as if his devotion wasn’t enough. 400 years ago, he too wondered at God’s silence. His poem “Denial” embodies his spiritual struggle, and it resonates with me on both personal and literary levels. In both its semantic content and formal structure, this poem enacts a desperate spiritual longing for divine comfort, acknowledgement, and reassurance. Herbert addresses God directly from the first line of the poem:

When my devotions could not pierce

Thy silent ears,

Then was my heart broken, as was my verse;

My breast was full of fears

And disorder.

Here, Herbert sets up a relation between his poetic trouble and his spiritual trouble. The meter of the poem is irregular. The number of stressed and unstressed syllables in each line varies, resulting in a jagged texture. Furthermore, each stanza contains four lines of braided rhyme. The first line rhymes with the third and the second line rhymes with the fourth, but the fifth line of every stanza is aurally lonely, not paired with another rhymed line. By writing a poem with a broken poetic meter and many orphaned lines, Herbert conveys the feeling of spiritual brokenness. “Denial” displays a duality of struggle: a poet’s struggle to arrange his words within a literary form, and a human’s struggle to arrange his faith within a spiritual form. 

iii.

One icy January morning, I stood on the bank of the South Platte River with my dad. A cold wind blew off the river, numbing my fingers and chapping my lips. I wore a puffy, hot pink coat and light-up running shoes. Dad picked up a gigantic rock and hurled it into the deep spot at the center of the river. Kerplunk. Eager to copy him, I strained to pick up the biggest rock I could find, and with a great heave, lobbed it into the shallow water on the river’s bank. Plink. He then showed me how to make rocks bounce across the water by skipping them with a flick of his wrist. We picked out these rocks together—wide, flat ones that could fit in our palms. “There’s a skipper,” he would say. His rocks would jump six or seven times before finally submerging in the water.

In this moment, I had only one dad; the only rules were finding skippers and throwing them into the river. But one month later, my parents divorced and my mom moved 100 miles away from my dad. Due to the long drive, I only saw my dad when it was time for state-mandated “visitation”: every other weekend, and half the holidays. Three years after the divorce, my parents married new spouses. My dad, Brad, married Heather. My mom, JoAnne, married Craig.

The two father figures in my life were radically different in terms of their spirituality. They embodied contrasting models of religious behavior and worship. At Brad’s house, we did not have regular scripture study. We went to church most Sundays, but often left early. Brad allowed me not only to wear pants on Sunday but wear them to church. He went to the store on Sunday, drank coffee, and swore. Brad introduced me to Harry Potter and we bonded through reading the books, watching the movies, and doing other activities that complicated my black-and-white understanding of the world.

On the other hand, Craig believed that drinking coffee, swearing, and grocery shopping on Sunday were serious sins. In addition to making sure my sisters and I observed the doctrinal commandments of our religion, Craig required us to follow many additional rules. I was not allowed to paint my fingernails yellow or wear my Beatles t-shirt because the Church counsels members to “seek moderation in all things” and such fashion choices were too extreme. I was not allowed to wear pants to church, or on Sunday. Craig banned Harry Potter from the house on account of its thematic darkness which he said would drive away God’s Spirit.

My efforts to obey conflicting rules in each household often got me in trouble. Once, when I was twelve years old, Brad and his wife Heather took my sisters and me to see the movie Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. I had read the entire series before the movie came out, so I was excited to see the film adaptation. But about halfway through the movie, the song “Highway to Hell” by AC/DC started playing, and I felt an incredible, anxious dread. I knew Craig would say this movie would drive away the Spirit from my heart, and I believed it was my duty to walk out of the theater as a sign of my obedience to God. Because I was the oldest of my three sisters, I felt responsible for setting a good example and showing them how to obey Craig’s rules. I sidled across my family’s knees and through the doors of the theater and never returned after walking out. After the movie ended, Brad and Heather were upset with me and told me that my closed mindedness ruined our family outing. 

When I look back on this experience and others like it, I realize how uptight and spiritually scrupulous I was as a child. I was so preoccupied with obeying my parents’ rules that I did not allow myself to notice which mode of living helped me best connect with God. Caught between binary fathers and their approaches to religion, I felt physically tense and spiritually unsure.

My bent thoughts, like a brittle bow,

Did fly asunder:

Each took his way; some would to pleasures go,

Some to the wars and thunder

Of alarms.

iv.

Many Church leaders, ancient and modern, try to help members develop a more concrete understanding of God by comparing Him to their earthly fathers. This comparison is often helpful; when people pray to God, they can imagine they are talking to a Person as sympathetic and compassionate as their biological father. They can trust that such a Person would give them fatherly advice and comfort. But sometimes when I pray to Heavenly Father, He feels distant, even silent, and I worry that He is disappointed or angry with me (my experience with my earthly fathers has contributed to this worry). Maybe all children worry about their relationships with their earthly and/or heavenly parents. Herbert seemed to share these worries when he described a frustrating experience with prayer in the third stanza of “Denial”:

“As good go anywhere,” they say,

“As to benumb

Both knees and heart, in crying night and day,

Come, come, my God, O come!

But no hearing.”

For most of my life, when I said “God,” I referred to my Father in heaven. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints supports this definition. In a dictionary of doctrinal terms, The Church explains that God is “The supreme Governor of the universe and the Father of mankind. … When one speaks of God, it is generally the Father who is referred to; that is, Elohim. All mankind are His children” (“God”).  

To be sure, the Church doesn’t deny the existence of a divine mother. In a published article they wrote, “Little has been revealed about our heavenly mother beyond a knowledge of her existence. Although we do not worship her, we honor her as a divine parent”. I appreciate that the Church recognizes that Heavenly Mother exists. But over the last few years, I have longed to feel Heavenly Mother’s presence more clearly, guiding me as a mother would.

I have often tried to imagine what Heavenly Mother might be like. Would I feel distance or silence if I prayed to Her? What advice, what comfort would She give? I imagine my relationship with Her might be like the one I have with my own earthly mom. If I want to talk, she’ll say, “what’s up, babes?” If I text her about some small victory in my life, she’ll reply with a message written in all caps, filled with colorful heart emojis. If I told her I was in pain, she would say, “Oh no, I’m so sorry, sweetie. I know it hurts.” She would listen to rock music with me. She would listen to me talk about my favorite parts of the Harry Potter series. She would give me fuzzy sweatpants to wear, even on Sunday. She would feed me, hug me, cry with me, pray with me.

I believe that God the Mother not only exists, but possesses godly power and a desire to play an active role in my life, just as God the Father does. I think that part of honoring Her as a divine parent means being conscious of the way in which we talk about God. In short, the pronouns we use when talking about God matter: He, Him, His; She, Her, Hers. Perhaps this means being open to a definition of God that includes not only the masculine Father, but also the feminine Mother.

v.

After I turned 18, in my freshman year at BYU, I was free of the parental constraints I grew up with. I wasn’t legally bound by visitation requirements and I finally had the freedom to make choices: which books I would read, what music I would listen to, which movies I would watch, which parents I would visit, when I would visit them, how often I would call home, and how I would structure my relationship with God. The new sense of agency I felt was liberating, but also overwhelming and frightening. I didn’t know how to tell if I was right or wrong. I often felt confused, unsure if the life that I was now building for myself was one that would bring me eternal happiness. I worried that my choice to live a life spiritually different from either of my fathers was making me unworthy before God.

During this year, I signed up for a field study trip with twenty BYU students and four professors. The trip promised a full term of constant hiking, camping, and other outdoor studies. I wanted an experience where I could encounter nature and define my spirituality on my own terms. One of the excursions our group took was a cross-country ski trip into the Uintah mountains. We stayed in yurts—round, wooden cabins that were bare except for ten sets of bunk beds. Because the nighttime temperatures dropped below freezing, we slept with two or three people (in different sleeping bags) to one bunk to stay warm. In the middle of the night, I crawled across my bunk mate, put on my snow gear, and started the trek through the three-foot-deep snow to the outhouse, a small shack situated about a quarter mile away from our yurt.

Once outside, I was shocked at the clarity of the stars. I am used to living under so much light pollution that it’s a miracle if I can see five hundred stars on a given night. But there in the mountains, I saw not only Ursa Major and Orion, but also Taurus, Gemini, and the Pleiades. The sky sparkled brighter than I had ever seen before. I stood outside the door of my yurt, watching the clouds of my breath float in the still air, listening to the small pffts of the snowflakes landing on the drifts below my feet.

As I crunched my way toward the outhouse, I caught the glint of another pair of eyes in the snow. A white fox! I had never seen one wild before. The soft curve of his tail swept the snow behind him. Pointy ears alert, he stood under the shadow of the pine tree from which he had emerged, staring at me. I stopped and stared back. It’s likely that he had seen a human before, but maybe not in this way. In that moment, I felt as if I was the first and only human on earth.

I imagine that each night, the fox brushes underneath the branches of that pine tree, his thoughts unrehearsed, loose-leaf, and still. How did that fox connect with God? Was his mind completely empty of spiritual concern? Maybe. But I imagine that his thoughts are formed with attention to single details: his tail brushing across the ground, sweeping the snow to the side. The paw print of a mouse. The scent of another fox nearby. Unlike me, that fox doesn’t yearn for his parents’ approval or obsess over their expectations. His life is governed not by an obsession with rules, but by simple pursuit of his basic needs. He doesn’t wonder if he is an unworthy fox or if God is disappointed. That night, I aspired to be more foxlike. To pay less attention to my spiritual anxieties, and instead be more attentive to my body, my senses, and the natural world around me.

vi.

God seems to care about both physical and spiritual form. The book of Genesis describes the state of the earth before God intervened: “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep” (Genesis 1:2). Yet God did not let the earth remain in a state of formlessness. God separated the light from the dark, the land from the sea, the heavens from the earth, the animals from the plants—implying that existence should be organized and structured. In addition to physical form, God gave the earth and its inhabitants a spiritual form: “And he gave unto them commandments, that they should worship the Lord their God” (Moses 5:5). 

I have many memories of sitting in Sunday School lessons about obedience. My teachers told the Bible stories of Abraham and Isaac; Elisha and Naaman; Moses and the Israelites; and Jesus: the perfect example of obedience. They taught that obedience is a sign of love to God, and that God would bless those who obeyed His commandments. I also remember an equal number of lessons on the gift of agency. My teachers taught that God respects humankind’s agency. God hopes that humans will choose to obey, but still allows them to use their agency, pursue their own passions, and follow their own paths.

Over time, I started to feel an acute tension between the concepts of agency and obedience. Even while God cares about the physical and spiritual form of the universe, God allows for a certain amount of messiness. New species evolve and multiply; the landscape erodes over time; billions of people make choices every day with no regard to spiritual commandments or moral codes or any other form whatsoever. So how much messiness will God allow in my own life? The ideal is to use my agency to choose the path of obedience, but it’s not always clear what obedience looks like. Brad showed me one possible view of obedience, while Craig showed me another. How rigidly should I limit my agency? How flexible can I be with my beliefs and choices while still remaining obedient? 

I ruminated on these questions nearly every day when I served as a full-time missionary in South Korea. Due to my scrupulous nature, I erred toward the path of structure and obedience, refusing to accept any choice that pushed the religious boundaries. I felt ashamed every time I woke up at 6:35 a.m. instead of 6:30 a.m. I felt guilty every time we spent 15 minutes longer at a meal than we had planned. I felt sinful every time I thought about my family back at home, got annoyed by my companion, or didn’t talk to the person next to me on the bus about Jesus. While my scrupulosity pushed me to be more obedient, it also made it difficult for me to trust my own agency.

I thought about the epiphany I had many months previous in the Uintah mountains. As I looked into that fox’s eyes, God’s commandments felt few and simple. Yet in Korea, it was difficult for me to maintain that simple mindset while still feeling like an obedient, productive missionary. I ended every day on the hardwood floor of my apartment, knees and heart numb. I pleaded for forgiveness and waited in silence to know if God still thought I was worthy. But many nights, I felt like Herbert—praying to a seemingly “no hearing” God.

vii.

I was driving south through Provo on one October evening. My prayer that evening echoed the fourth stanza of Herbert’s poem—

O that thou shouldst give dust a tongue

To cry to thee,

And then not hear it crying! All day long

My heart was in my knee,

But no hearing.

My heart and knees were numb that night, so I visited my best friend, Bethany. She was just a few days away from getting married. When I walked into her apartment, I saw, instead of Bethany, a petite woman standing next to a small table filled with essential oils and herbal teas. Bethany explained by telling me that her soon-to-be mother-in-law (her English name is Grace) had flown in from China and was staying with her until her wedding. Through her digital translator, Grace told me that I looked tired and offered to treat my sore muscles with some of her essential oils. She directed me to remove my clothing and lie face down on her bed.

In my nakedness, I felt vulnerable and exposed, but I trusted Bethany without question, and I trusted Grace by association, so I did as she asked. I laid down on the bed and tried to be like the fox: still and unruffled. Grace lined up twenty bottles of different essential oils on the table and, one by one, rubbed them into my skin and my scalp. Her hands were small but strong and found each of my pressure points with ease. The deliberate, rhythmic movements of Grace’s hands on my skin relaxed my muscles, relieved the anxiety I felt in that moment, and made me feel safe, taken care of. I was touched that a total stranger was willing to do what she could to ease my pain, even though she had no obligation to me. Grace was not offended by my nakedness or my strangeness to her. 

I am afraid of vulnerability because exposing myself to others often invites judgement and criticism. But Grace’s massage reminded me that Mother God is a woman with healing hands. Mother God is a woman who is unashamed of nakedness. She is a woman who says yes, who is present, who is close. When Her children are sorrowful and heavy, when they cry Mommy, Mother God comes to them from heaven, strengthening them.

viii.

God is:

A Poet.

A Teacher.

An Artist.

The Creator of the universe.

A Friend.

A Comforter.

A Woman.

A Man.

A Parent.

My Mother in Heaven.

My Father in Heaven.

ix.

I’ve come to understand more about my own spiritual freedom. I have begun to rebuild my own spirituality and connection with God, but I have still felt spiritually heavy for the past several months. Every day, the state of the world’s affairs seems to worsen. The list of concrete actions that I can take to solve any big problem grows shorter. There is no facet of life in this world—financial, socio-political, environmental, biological, medical, racial, interpersonal—that seems untouched by turmoil and tragedy. Even the smaller issue of my own life is congested with a confusing smoke. My soul is thirsty for hope and relief. I have turned to God the Father for spiritual guidance. I have turned to God the Mother for hope and reassurance. I’ve done everything I can think to do—study the scriptures, fast, pray, attend the temple—but I still feel the sadness Herbert described in stanza five:

Therefore my soul lay out of sight,

Untuned, unstrung:

My feeble spirit, unable to look right,

Like a nipped blossom, hung

Discontented.

One night, I sat in my car in the parking lot of the Payson temple. I rolled down my windows and felt the coldness of the wind raise goosebumps on my arms. The rush of the wind in my ears was hollow. My mind was empty of ideas, my heart was empty of hope. Was God not hearing? Or was there a reason why God left me empty?

x.

In the last stanza of “Denial”, Herbert equates the poem’s rhyme scheme to the state of his own soul. Herbert addresses God as the source of both spiritual and poetic healing:

O cheer and tune my heartless breast,

Defer no time;

That so thy favors granting my request,

They and my mind may chime,

And mend my rhyme.

This stanza takes a hopeful turn: the last line of the last stanza is no longer aurally orphaned, as the fifth lines of each preceding stanza were. Instead, “rhyme” links sonically with “time” and “chime”. In content, as well as in form, Herbert’s rhyme is repaired. In essence, Herbert prays, “I am to my poem as You are to me. I am Your poem, and I am broken. I will mend my poem as a prayer to You to mend me.”

Like Herbert, I pray that God will grant my requests for answers, hope, peace, love, and healing.  

xi.

               On a recent fall evening, I walked home from campus after one of my classes. It was dark. I felt heavy with my usual anxieties. My soul echoed Herbert’s words, and I prayed to the Heavenly Parents I hoped were listening, “O cheer and tune my heartless breast, / Defer no time; / That so thy favors granting my request, / They and my mind may chime…” I walked beneath a tree. When I came out the other side, I felt a drop of rain land on my nose. Another drop dropped on my forehead. Then one on my hand, and again on my shoulder. A strand of my hair escaped its ponytail and tickled my cheek. Soon, my hair was dripping, and I was wiping rain out of my eyes. My thoughts grew quieter, my muscles began to relax. Like the fox, I breathed in the scent of wet soil, pine trees, and wind. My thoughts were unrehearsed, loose-leaf, and still. This rainstorm felt heaven sent—an interruption in a pattern of unsolvable, hopeless thirst. A mending of my rhyme.