Manifesto for the Mormon Arts
by James Goldberg
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I speak to you.
Not to them.
Not to the world.
We don’t have time
to choke today
beneath the pride
of the world.
I speak to you.
I speak to you
and just to you:
for in this hour
we are sent to none
but the lost sheep
of the house of Israel.
To sing new songs
to heavy-eared Israel.
To make many-colored
coats for blind-eyed Israel.
To take stiff-necked Israel
by the hand and show her
how to dance.
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Sound the trumpet.
In an hour of darkness,
sound the trumpet. Sound
the call to arms.
Awake, O Zion.
Awake, awake:
put on thy strength.
Wield the word
like a two-edged sword,
dividing and discerning.
Pierce the soul, cut bone
and marrow, delve deep
into the thoughts and intents
of the human heart.
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Your work
needs
anchors
not
boundaries.
Bind yourself to God—
and let your heart swell
wide as eternity. Feel
the yearning in your gut
so strong eternity shakes.
All depths are yours.
All heights are yours.
Darkness yours as surely
as the light. Wrong is yours
as surely as the right.
Find an anchor,
a sure anchor,
an anchor
whose truth
you can trust
to set you
free.
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The world.
The world.
The pride of the world.
So much space taken up
by the pride of this world.
Talent spent in vain pursuit
of the pride of this world.
Chasing greatness—meted out
by the pride of this world.
Maya, they called it
where my grandfather
was young: Illusion.
How we grasp at a
mirage of glory.
How eager we are
to let ourselves be led
by pre-packaged dreams
of the pride of the world.
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We sell our birthright of revolutionary insight for the pottage of respectability.
And, so doing, bind ourselves with the chains of assimilationist self-shame.
They used to rap people across the knuckles for speaking their own language,
but now we’ll do it ourselves. We’ll tend the garden the empire’s way,
a monoculture field for cash crops. The same old messages, over and
over. The terms of debate as fixed and bounded as a gladiatorial fight.
Oh we, who were called to imagine another city, work instead to pave
Babylonian roads. Mustard seeds slip away like faith between our fingers.
The tongue grows weary. The tongue forgets its tales, its aims, our names.
The milk and honey are free: but we will buy their dreams instead
for a price, for such a price. It will cost us root and branch.
We let them divide us. We seek occasion against sister, against brother,
so desperate for them to see how they’ve divided us. So desperate to
impress the people who divided us. But they’ve moved on—and we
inherit the wind.
Like people turning into rhinoceroses, we learn to call our losses beautiful.
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Send a whisper
through the night.
In an hour of darkness,
raise an ensign of electrons:
let your words hiss out
in the night.
Let your words
pierce to the core
in the night
because the
soul bleeds
only light.
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Maybe no one is watching
--and that is OK.
Maybe no one is watching:
it’s better that way.
It means no one will tell you
the things you should say.
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The proper posture for writing is this:
head covered, feet bared, in the desert
on your exiled knees.
The proper posture for painting is this:
lashed to the mast in a storm on the sea,
wrists sore. Eyes stung by rain.
The proper posture for composing is this:
a burden heavy on your back, an overseer
driving prayer into your heart.
The proper posture for dancing is this:
Alone, left all alone, in the wind and
earthquake and fire. Still.
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No one makes money doing this.
Almost no one makes money
doing any kind of art, but
no one even dreams of
making money doing
this. And the hours
are so full with
obligations
great and
small.
No one
makes the
money to have
the time to do this.
Yet somehow you are
still doing this: dreaming,
hoping, against all the odds
that it will cease to be a miracle
for you to find time and will for this.
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No one makes money doing this.
The people are too many,
says the Lord, the Lord
great and terrible,
Whoever is fearful and
afraid, let him depart.
Whoever is ashamed
let him or her depart.
Whoever hesitates
to speak our names
let him or her depart.
This time let it be thus:
whoever only sips at these
waters, whoever trusts the hands
more than the water, whoever kneels
but will not fall on their face to
gulp grace greedy from the source—
let them depart, let them go
in goodwill and peace
while we who drink
with reckless abandon
bear the torches
through the night.
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Speak our language.
Speak our language
in your own lilting accent.
We don’t have time today
for you to choke on the
halting words you translate
into a Gentile tongue.
Speak our language.
Sing the songs of your people.
Sing of the old women who served
so well and saw so much and take
the sacrament now in their homes.
Sing praise for all those who were
strangers in a strange land when
they took up the faith. Sing glory
for the bare walls and spare spaces,
for the foyers and people chatting
in the halls. Sing the stumbles and
the rising of the past, sing futures
into our imagination.
Sing the humble foods of the nomad,
words flowing like milk and honey
from your mouth, without money
and without price.
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Sound the trumpet.
Sound the trumpet
in the darkness.
Sound the truth.
The breaking of
clay vessels. Sound
the breaking. Sound clay
breaking. Sound the truth.
The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon!
The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon!
The word is sharper than a two-edged sword.
Let words ring through the night.