Yike! I acted.

Writing is strange, and even stranger when doing it for others. I have officially stepped out of the safety of my little blog. Two weeks ago I leaped a little, or a lot, I can't decide, by applying for a creative writing program in New York. I felt a little crazy. I had been poking at this story for some time, grappling with where it begins and where it ends, and to my surprise it started taking on some form. I'm still not quite sure what I turned in, or who would even care to listen, but something in me needed to try. I can think of fifteen reasons why it wasn't a good idea. For one, writers are self-absorbed, for two New York is scary, and maybe I should just let writing be a hobby.

But I am out there, and vulnerability is uncomfortable....and I know that fear squelches fire. So I am waiting...trying to keep my head, singing "On Top of Spaghetti" to my sweet little preschool friends. They remind me life is right in front of me in the mean time. Anyway, turning it in brought something unexpected, some kind of release, and I imagined for the first time in a long time there might be meaning in these silly details I am telling, and the temptation of trusting my upward gaze again has been scaring my heart to tears.

If the reviewers throw me in the pile, I hope I will learn, and that at least I'll be able to console myself with my bravery. Here is an exerpt close to the end of my writing sample...I could have used another week for editing, but so it is...

The summer after Joseph Smith died in Carthage jail in 1844, in the very same week, Henry David Thoreau moved into his self-built house at Walden Pond in Concord. Last summer I swam its shining edges, shaded by trees. Thoreau was on a Harvard and philosophy beaten path and was a seer of a different kind; nature was his poem. His eyes saw visions too, tracing the outlines of the red-finned minnow. He stalked the life of plants and found kindred in their ways. I wonder if Joseph had stayed in New England, and aged among different company. While stalking pews, entertaining visions, might he and Henry David met in the woods? Would they have spoken? Joseph entered the Palmyra grove in New York with eyes closed, searching the heavens. What if he had come out speaking of trees?

In Washington, I hear the wind brushing firs. Their sweeping arms stand tall over my childhood memories. On the BYU campus in Utah I remember the widely dispersed array of leaves. There were English Elm, Japanese Maple, Serbian Spruce, and Russian Olive. Now there are more Latter Day Saints living outside the United States than in. Grafted in, they number more than 11 million, and then there are the offshoots. In New England I hear the leaves that crunched beneath Joseph Smith’s feet. I watch the seasons move through maples and cedars. My eyes trace their branches and the stories they weave. It is one shoot after all that begins and spreads the sparsing, it branches off in curves and twining arches, and I am a tiny twig, a mere leaf. I can break off but cannot help falling beneath the tree. It is here I want to lay my head, to breath, to mourn, to laugh at this story. Why it is Christianity has lent to such wanderings, and what in the world God thinks of it all. Here my restless eyes find shade from all these horizons, their human twerps. I am tired from searching pews, and realizing how wrapped up I have been in Joseph's church-bound questions, meanwhile this earth I am wandering has been passing me by. Underneath these trees, whether my eyes are closed or open, I see hands that have been weaving something far more beautiful and complex than I'll ever understand. I remember Jesus too, his calmness when he spoke, and I faint to belong in what his words began.