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Gifts
Without Thunderous Applause
by
Marvin Payne
When I awoke
on this spring morning, snow was gently falling in wide feathery
cookies, light as air. Gazillions of them. As they fell down through
the baby leaves on the aspens, neither disturbed the other—they
were that light. This might be some of the last snow of the season.
When it falls unexpectedly, out of time somehow, it sort of stops
your head in its tired little circuit of worries and makes you gaze
out the window and think about things. Maybe it reminds us how our
lives can change as completely as snow changes the world. I wrote
this poem nine years ago on the occasion of that season's first
snow.
The first snow of the year
is falling, wide flakes swirling
and slanting through stuttering sunshine.
A little catches on the grass.
I think of deep snowfall
on some other winter, and you.
The sun is back.
The street shines black
and grass is green.
Still, snowflakes wander
like moths.
It's a gift, really, snow. It just, for no apparent practical reason,
looks beautiful as it falls. Then it's beautiful as it lies there.
(Of course, our pushing it around and driving cars through it and
dropping pollution on it is what messes up the beauty.) Then, when
we need water, that's what snow becomes, having been stored and
delivered in ways we could never have thought of, let alone executed.
Beautiful ways.
I spent a couple of days recently with a few dozen artists I merely
know, a few more I was meeting for the first time, and a couple
dozen with whom I'd worked closely over the years. Filmmakers, painters,
writers, musicians, and theatre geeks. (I was invited as a theatre
geek, although my oldest friends were the painters, and I'd spent
a lot of hours working with folks in each group.) We all just kind
of reported on what we're up to and tried to get each other fired
up with sufficient passion and vision and unity to, say, remain
alive. Several prophets who have had the recklessness to imagine
that artists could somehow be useful were quoted plentifully, and
the ghosts of Shakespeare and Milton were summoned often (not Berle,
although now, being shortly deceased, his spirit is probably available
for such summoning—and heaven knows we could probably use it).
It's an invitational event, sponsored by some particularly generous
and avid art aficionados, and the idea is to pass the invitations
around with the Primary Objective of somehow enhancing the making
of art in the Kingdom. My Primary Objective was to avoid saying
or doing anything that would be so dumb as to ensure that I would
never be asked back. I almost succeeded. My one input that seemed
to stick was, "For a lot of people, what work is for is to make
money. For me, what money is for is to make work." The bigger fact
is that art in the kingdom generally doesn't make money, but money
can help make art in the kingdom.
The prevalent feeling there wasn't nearly as smarty-pants as you
might expect to find at elite artiste events like this. (I wish
I knew how to type those little French accents over the words "elite
artistes.") I think that's because pretty much everybody there knew
in their bones that even though they'd all worked hard to get good
at what they do, it all began with gifts from their Heavenly Father—free
as snow, filled with apparently senseless beauty and fashioned on
principles none of us could have thought of, let alone executed.
Also everybody there was not only an artist, but a home teacher,
a primary president, a temple worker, or a den mother. In other
words, involved in important stuff.
I wrote in my journal the next day (Sunday, the day I always remember
with a certain sobering amazement that I'm the elders quorum president):
"Being a Mormon
Artist means that you will compose anthems and portray prophets
and generate thunderous applause for truth, and muck out canneries
and load moving vans and dig irrigation trenches and honestly wonder
which of these things is most important."
Gifts. What are they for, anyway? For that matter, what are they?
I've always been a song-and-dance man (can't dance, really, but
people have often been choreographed to dance around me in ways
that have actually fooled any number of audiences—maybe three,
maybe that's the number). Those are gifts. But what about speaking,
listening, enjoying, being curious and yearning? Is the mere ability
to "hunger and thirst after righteousness" actually a gift? A lot
of people don't, you know—hunger and thirst. Do you? It's probably
a gift. Like everything, in fact. Doesn't King Benjamin remind us
that God is lending us one breath at a time? And isn't it the Light
of Christ that holds all things in their orbit, including the particles
that twirl around the obsquatillions of atomic nuclei in our very
bodies? Woh.
From my journal, 19 June 1991:
"Late the other night, 13-year-old Joshua [my son who is maybe
one of the most gifted mortals currently residing on the planet,
therefore, one would expect, an expert on gifts] and I [a pretty
gifted mortal also, I guess, breathing as consistently as I do]
were talking about the question David [my most gifted child before
Joshua was born] had asked at breakfast, ''Why do we taste?'' He
hadn't asked 'How,' but 'Why.' Joshua said he thought it was a gift."
Well, yes. That from an expert.
Might it be the height of presumptuousness to attempt ranking the
gifts of God in order of importance? Here goes, anyway. In the 46th
Section of the Doctrine and Covenants are these amazing words: "To
some it is given by the Holy Ghost to know that Jesus Christ is
the Son of God, and that he was crucified for the sins of the world.
To others it is given to believe on their words, that they also
might have eternal life if they continue faithful." (A guy I home
taught a long time ago, now deceased, always believed but never
knew. He was real encouraged when I read him this passage.) To know
for sure about Jesus is a great gift. It's a great gift even just
to want to know for sure. And you're gifted beyond billions of your
fellows if you simply believe.
What is a gift like that for? The artist would say, "To share! That's
why we live! To lift! To celebrate!" They might even quote the Jesuit
poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, who wrote, "Give beauty back to God,
beauty's Self and beauty's Giver." Or the Savior Himself, who said
that if we share our gifts with "the least of these my brethren,"
we are sharing them with Him. Good enough for song-and-dance men,
I guess. Elite artistes. But short of being on stage someplace,
or having a monthly slot in a cool magazine like this one, or a
semiannual appointment to speak in General Conference, where do
we share? You choose. Back fence, primary class, e-mail to old schoolmates,
lots of places. But maybe to justify my gig here, may I suggest
your journal?
I have no memory of when I wrote this poem. It was before I kept
a journal (but not before I kept poems).
Where we live, the snow falls,
all through the silent night,
in hushing curtains, veiling
all the ugliness in sight.
And when the darkness shallows
and the sun begins his flight,
all shapes in all creation
are bright echoes of his light.
When Jesus came, the snow fell
(or so the carols say),
although in springtime Bethlehem
a blossom burst that day,
and cast its color on the hill
a few brief miles away,
where Jesus would, like snowfall,
clothe us white, and cleanse our clay.
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Visit
marvinpayne.com!
"...come
unto Christ, and lay hold upon every good gift..." (from
the last page of the Book of Mormon)
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